{"id":35068,"date":"2019-11-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/porsche-made-in-austria-2\/"},"modified":"2020-10-08T12:23:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T12:23:19","slug":"porsche-made-in-austria-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/en\/porsche-made-in-austria-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Porsche – Made in Austria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although Porsche itself has never made a secret of the fact and it has been reported in many hundreds, if not thousands, of publications, many car fans still wonder when they hear or read that Porsche sports cars originally came from Austria. If we get into the topic at the very beginning, this becomes clear to a small extent. Ferdinand Porsche was born on 3 September 1875 in Maffersdorf in Bohemia. Since 1919 this village has again been called Vratislavice nad Nisou and belongs to the Czech Republic. Already in his childhood Ferdinand Porsche was enthusiastic about the emerging electricity and cabled his parents’ house and his father’s tinsmith’s shop in his own work. Since he couldn’t find adequate work in rural Bohemia, he talked to his parents until they sent him to Reichenberg to attend the state trade school. He then began working for Vereinigte Elektrizit\u00e4ts-AG B\u00e9la Egger in Vienna, where after only four years he took over the management of the testing department and developed the very first wheelhub electric motor, which he patented in 1896. After moving to the Lohner Werke in 1899, he built the hybrid vehicle Lohner-Porsche with all-wheel drive. This was followed by a longer episode with Austro-Daimler, during which he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the TH Vienna for his services to Austria and also received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph for his war developments. The end of the Habsburg monarchy meant that he wasn’t elevated to the rank of nobility by the Austrian aristocracy. However, he had already acquired Austrian citizenship a few years earlier.

So much for the first part of the explanation of what Porsche connects with Austria. For Ferdinand Porsche, who had married Aloisia Johanna Kaes in Vienna in 1903 and had become a father twice in 1904 (Louise) and 1909 (Ferdinand Anton Ernst, known as ‘Ferry’), the career went on in Germany at Daimler Motorengesellschaft (DMG), which merged with Benz & Cie. to form Daimler-Benz AG in 1926. Afterwards he had a short return to the company Steyr in Austria, which, however, merged with Austro-Daimler one year after the contract was signed and terminated Porsche’s employment immediately. So it came to a step, which Ferry Porsche later described in his memoirs, that his father had asked himself, why he had set various thought-provoking impulses in motion at various manufacturers and had done preparatory work for new developments, from which these benefited for years after his respective dismissals, without him having anything to gain from it. In 1931 the engineering office ‘Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratung f\u00fcr Motoren und Fahrzeuge’ (construction and consulting for engines and vehicles) was founded in Stuttgart. There, Ferdinand Porsche, in addition to his son Ferry, also employed companions from previous stations of his career such as the chief engineer Karl Rabe, the engine developer Josef Kales, the suspension specialist Josef Zahradnik or Karl Fr\u00f6hlich as transmission specialist. In addition, his son-in-law Anton Pi\u00ebch (father of Ferdinand Pi\u00ebch) and the racing driver and merchant Adolf Rosenberger were shareholders. Next to the work on a small car for Z\u00fcndapp, a middle-class car for NSU, a two-liter touring car for Wanderer and the 16-cylinder Grand Prix racing cars for Auto Union, the development of the Volkswagen, which Ferdinand Porsche personally sent to Reichsf\u00fchrer Adolf Hitler as a plan, also took place here.<\/p>\n\n\n

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