Page 4 - Sample pages "Forty Six: The Birth of Porsche Motorsport"

FIFTY YEARS LEADING UP TO LE MANS
From the start of his long career as an engineer and automobile designer, Ferdinand Porsche raced what he created. This was first with electric cars with massive storage batteries for Jakob Lohner in Vienna and then advanced to what can best be described as modern-day (as in the 21st
Century) hybrids between 1900 and 1910. These hybrids utilized gasoline internal combustion engines that spun generators which charged batteries that would run the electric motors. From 1906 (at Austro-Daimler) on, he worked almost exclusively with internal combustion engines. He raced the touring cars he designed for Austro- Daimler from 1911 to the 1920s; he competed with his purpose-designed racers for Daimler and likewise with Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart through the 1920s. The Porsche-designed, Austro-Daimler Sascha finished first and second in the 1922 Targa Florio 1,100cc class. Ferdinand’s racing career culminated with thoroughbred Grand Prix cars for Auto Union in the 1930s. He believed racing provided him much better testing than driving ten – or a hundred – times as many miles in routine
traffic. Moreover, racing success brought his consulting company new business. This proved the case even as he polished his reputation as a challenging and demanding individual with whom towork.
By the time projects for Steyr in Austria came about, he had alienated enough board members and chairmen that he concluded it was best for his business and his peace of mind if he had his own firm. That way, when they sought him out, he already had reserved the right to say “no thank you.” He chose them as much as they asked for him. On April 25, 1931, Ferdinand Porsche (with Anton Piëch and Adolf Rosenberger) registered an engineering office at Kronenstraße 24 in Stuttgart under the name ‘Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, Konstruktion und Beratung für Motoren – und Fahrzeugbau’ (Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche Ltd., Design and Consultancy Company for Engine and Vehicle Production.) In 1938, the company relocated to the Zuffenhausen suburb. That location would become known as Porsche Werk I.
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