30 May Tucker v Porsche Part 2
Why do some people fail and others succeed in the auto industry? The annals of the motor industry contain numerous examples of entrepreneurs, car names and car companies that featured briefly, massively, or sometimes even ignominiously. Preston Tucker and Ferdinand Porsche were two historical contemporaries who started fledgling car companies at about the same time, but in quite different environments. During his post-graduate studies at the University of Tasmania, Leon Joubert made a fascinating academic comparison of their fortunes. Following is the second of a three-part article that, with his kind permission, draws extensively from Leon’s research and thesis.
Part Two: Ferdinand & Ferry Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche (b.1875) was a self-taught automotive engineer who received an honorary doctorate from the Vienna Technical University. He was a brilliant innovator and, amongst many other achievements, the designer of the Volkswagen Beetle. In 1933, the Hitler government offered a 500 000 Reichmarks subsidy to a company that would design and build a grand-prix-winning race car for Germany. Daimler-Benz won the award, while Auto Union (using Porsche’s design) lost, but Ferdinand managed to convince Hitler to finance both designs. The Auto Union featured a 4,5-litre V16 engine mid-mounted in an aluminium tube frame. It was a “fearsome race car” which produced 650 horsepower (485 kW) and could spin its wheels at 100 mph (160 km/h). It won numerous races and its reputation endures to this day.
Ferdinand Porsche’s skills as an automotive designer and engineer are legendary. He was also an excellent racing driver in his own right. In the early 1900s, Porsche worked for Lohner-Werke during which time Porsche designed several electric vehicles along with the first hybrid electric vehicle and the first hybrid cars by using Daimler and Panhard’s internal combustion engines to power wheel mounted electric motors – the System Lohner-Porsche. In later years Porsche was awarded several honorary doctorates and a professorship in engineering.
He then became the chief designer and managing director of Austro-Daimler and, later, the technical director of Daimler-Benz. The Mercedes-Benz SS, SSK and SSKL cars were amongst his more outstanding designs of the late-1920s. In 1934 he designed the car that would eventually become the Volkswagen Beetle.
Ferdinand had amassed substantial social capital through the sheer quality of his work. When, during the 1930s depression, Porsche’s employer, Steyr, collapsed and Porsche had to establish his own engineering consultancy, it is recorded that “… the new Porsche design firm soon had projects after opening, such was Porsche’s reputation”.
In 1946, Prof Porsche was imprisoned by the French as a war criminal (reportedly at the insistence of rival French car industrialists) while his son, Ferdinand Anton ‘Ferry’ Porsche, worked in relative exile in Gmund, Austria, where he repaired cars, sold water pumps and winches. Ferdinand’s life’s work was ultimately distilled into one little sports car – the Type 356 – that Ferry designed and built in 1947 and which laid the foundations of the Porsche car company. Prof Ferdinand Porsche died in 1951.
