Chapter 1:

Genesis in Gmünd1900–1946

he Allies expected no surprises in the rustic village ofGmünd, in Austria’s mountainous southern provinceof Carinthia. The year was 1945, the month May, and

Germany had just capitulated. Scarcely a month had passedsince Allied detachments had swarmed over the Bavarian Alpswest of Salzburg. There they’d expected to overwhelm thehigh command of the Third Reich, which—according to theJosef Goebbels propaganda machine—was sealing itself intorock caverns and planning to wage a glorious last battle.

But the feared “National Redoubt” did not exist afterall—at least not in the form imagined. Instead of a rockyhigh country honeycombed with tunnels and bristling withpillboxes, the Allied troops saw grazing cows and placid set-

tlements of nonbelligerents who wereonly too happy to be Bavarians again.British forces commanded the moun-tainous southerly sector of Austria,near Bavaria and bordering on bothItaly and Yugoslavia. The troopspatrolling the narrow roads and quietvillages of Carinthia had no reason tothink that they would find anythingout of the ordinary in a village asremote as Gmünd.

About 25 miles north of the Italianborder, on a gravelly delta at the con-fluence of the Malta and Lieser rivers,

Gmünd was little more than a layby along Route 331, thetwisting road that linked Klagenfurt, Carinthia’s capital, withSalzburg, some 70 miles to the north. With its steep-roofedhouses and split-rail fences, Gmünd looked like just anotherbucolic Austrian village. Several citizens, however, suggestedto the British officers that they pay a visit to the sawmill thatstood on the edge of town in the Malta valley. There theyfound, clustered around the one-story sawmill and a smalloutbuilding, a strange assortment of vehicles: various modelsof the Volkswagen, the “people’s car” ordered built by Hitler. 3

Above left:Type 60K10 coupe withblackout masks(see page 15)

Above right:The Porsche Gmündshop (see page 18)

Left:Prof. FerdinandPorsche confers withengine designer FranzXaver Reimspiess(left) at the Kronen-strasse office in 1938.

After years of working as an engineer for

major German automakers, in 1930 Profes-

sor Ferdinand Porsche established his own

firm to consult to the industry. Although the

resulting automobiles wore the nameplates

of others, Porsche was the man behind cars

built by Wanderer, Volkswagen and the

mighty Auto Union racing cars. Immediately

before and during World War II, Porsche

designed vehicles for the German Military.

T

CHAPTER 1 GENESIS IN GMÜND | 1900–1946

4

But this was more than a boneyard for Adolf’s dream car.The collection included a rare convertible, military modelsand a claustrophobically streamlined coupe. Inside thewooden buildings, the British found the biggest surprise of all:the chief designer, the core of the engineering staff and muchof the records and equipment of one of Germany’s mostrespected engineering firms—the Porsche KG. This was thebrilliant team that had designed the versatile military Volk-swagen in both conventional and amphibian versions, not tomention such armored vehicles as the awesome Elefant anti-tank weapon and, in the last months of the war, two proto-types of the largest tank ever conceived—a machine ironicallydubbed the Maus (Mouse).

No one had known the Porsche staff was there: notBritain’s MI5, the American OSS or the Soviet GRU—shrewdinvestigators who had every reason to want to know theteam’s whereabouts. Since the autumn of 1944 these men—fully half of Porsche’s 588-man engineering cadre—had beenundisturbed at their work in the peaceful haven of Gmünd.Their removal to Carinthia from bomb-shattered Stuttgarthad, as intended, allowed them to work undisturbed on newtanks, engines, personnel carriers and even farm tractors forthe peacetime that had now so suddenly arrived. And theirevacuation to Austria had gone undiscovered by the Allies—until now.

This half of the Porsche company was destined to spendalmost six years in Gmünd, not a long time for a firm that hadbeen founded in 1930. Yet six years were enough to conceiveand rear a child to school age. In this instance they were also

In the Allied occupation zones established in Austria after the war,Gmünd was in the British zone, south of Salzburg and north of Trieste.

enough to bring a new kind of automobile out of the cradleand onto its first unsteady footing. Gmünd was the birthplaceof the car we know today as the Porsche.

Porsche BeginningsThe Porsche name had been part of automobile history fromas early as 1900. That year, the Lohner-Porsche was beingbuilt in Vienna to the designs of the brilliant FerdinandPorsche, a mere 25 years of age. Then, as throughout hiscareer, the founder of the Porsche dynasty made his living bydesigning for others. After Lohner came Daimler of Austria,Daimler and Daimler-Benz of Germany, followed by Steyr,Auto Union and Volkswagen, to name only the most promi-nent firms that engaged his services.

Until 1929, the year he spent with Steyr, Porsche had beendirectly employed by the companies he served. But thisarrangement had not always been fully satisfactory. SaysFerry Porsche, his son and successor: “My father found thatwhen he signed a contract with a firm, they could liveanother ten years on his designs, but he couldn’t!” Porschetherefore decided to set up his own design office. As he toldhis son: “It makes no sense for me to keep going to one com-pany after another.”

Obtaining financial backing from investor friends, Porscheestablished his firm in 1930. Some work for the new companywas being done in Austria in August of that year; a few monthslater, on December 1, 1930, its headquarters were opened inStuttgart, Germany. Nestled in a natural amphitheater alongthe Neckar River (a tributary of the Rhine), Stuttgart was thehome of numerous automotive and engineering firms. Thesewould serve as a major source of supply and talent for thenew Porsche enterprise.

On March 6, 1931, the Porsche corpo-ration was officially registered with theGerman authorities. Its first project, thedesign of a Wanderer automobile, wasdesignated Type 7. At the end of its firstyear, the new company had just 19employees. By 1938 its payroll hadsoared to 176, of whom 72 were engi-neers and administrators. By that time,the prosperity of the Porsche enterprise—booming to meet the demands of theVolkswagen project—was such that thecompany was able to build offices of itsown in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffen-hausen. The new headquarters offeredcomplete facilities for designing, building,and testing motor vehicles. Movingovernight to avoid the loss of a singleworking day, the Porsche men wereinstalled in Zuffenhausen in June 1938.Here, in the same year, they completedthe design of the car that would become

known as the Volkswagen—the car that was to make Porsche’sname world-famous.

Meanwhile, the company’s success enabled Porsche to berestructured as a limited partnership, called in German aKommanditgesellschaft or KG. The change, which occurred in1938, marked the rise to full ownership of the firm by mem-bers of the Porsche family, including a new generation thathad begun to take an active role in the company’s affairs.Among those sharing leadership in the Porsche enterprisewere the children of Porsche’s marriage to Aloisia Kaes: hisson Ferry and his daughter Louise, along with Louise’s hus-band, Dr. Anton Piëch.

Louise, the first-born (1904), was an exceptional, deter-mined woman whom many saw as the purest embodiment ofher father’s spirit. Anton Piëch, whom she married in 1927,was from a Viennese family of French origin. Having followedin his father’s footsteps by training as a lawyer, the energeticPiëch was a founding partner of the Porsche design office anda vital negotiator of its major contracts. During World War II,he served as Ferdinand Porsche’s deputy at the Volkswagenfactory near Fallersleben, west of Berlin.

Porsche’s son, Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, was born in1909. Nicknamed Ferry, he was immersed in automotive lorefrom his earliest days. “I have, so to speak, come into theworld with the automobile,” he once said. At ten he was ableto drive, and at 16 he was behind the wheel of an experimen-tal Mercedes. Trained and apprenticed in every important dis-cipline of the industry, Ferry Porsche became an employee of

PORSCHE BEGINNINGS

5

Ferdinand Porsche developed the supercharged 1924 Mercedes (top)and the 1927 Mercedes-Benz Type S.

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the Stuttgart office in 1931. There he completed his first draw-ing—that of a Wanderer connecting rod. With a Wanderer, a carhe had test-driven as well as helped design, Ferry competed inthe Baden-Baden trial in 1934: a 2,000-kilometer run over theopen roads of Germany. In 1939 he took over the manage-ment of the Zuffenhausen office after his father was made oneof the directors of the new Volkswagen factory.

Adolf Hitler laid the cornerstone of the new Volkswagenplant on May 26, 1938. Frustrated by the refusal of the exist-ing German auto companies to cooperate with him and withPorsche in building a “peoples car,” Hitler decided that thenation would build it instead. The money was to come fromthe German Labor Front, a pseudo-union organizationheaded by Dr. Robert Ley. One of its branches, known asKraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) or KdF, was tohandle the sales of the VW, which was henceforth to beknown as the KdF-Wagen. Another branch, set up in May1937, was the Corporation for the Advancement of the Ger-man Volkswagen, which was responsible for getting the newcar on the road.

The People of PorscheThe principals of the VW-building company were Dr. BodoLafferentz, a Ley deputy; Ferdinand Porsche and Jakob Wer-lin, the Munich Mercedes-Benz dealer and representative whoadvised Hitler on automotive matters. Although the companyofficially had a Berlin address, from mid-1938 on it was actu-ally based in the new Porsche Zuffenhausen works. Thesewere the simplest aspects of the incredibly complex organiza-tion that the Third Reich created to build the VW. A curiousentity, it at once included Ferdinand Porsche and was also acustomer for his firm’s designs. Needless to say, this was an

invitation to Porsche and his team to expand theiroperation, its turnover and its profits.

As was his custom, Porsche proposed manymore versions of the VW-to-be than just the sim-ple sedan. In its final form, the basic chassis wasknown as the Type 60 (marking its place in thesuccession of Porsche projects since the Type 7).Designed for the Type 60 chassis were sedan, con-vertible sedan, and cabriolet bodies—essentiallythose the world later came to know well.

Other variations on the VW theme wereworked out by the exceptionally talentedAustrian-born Porsche staff. At its head, as chiefdesigner, was Karl Rabe (born in 1895), who forso many years was Porsche’s link between inspi-ration and realization. The modest and bespecta-cled Rabe had been one of the first men Porschecalled upon when he opened his own office.Despite his self-effacing manner, Rabe was nostranger to responsibility and would show his

best in the worst of times.Like Rabe, Franz Xaver Reimspiess (born in 1901) was

known to Ferdinand Porsche from his days at Austro-Daimlerbefore World War I. His contribution to the VW and thus, indi-rectly, to the Porsche car was the fundamental conception ofthe air-cooled four-cylinder opposed engine used in the Type60. At Steyr, Porsche had come to know two more close asso-ciates. One was Karl Fröhlich (born in 1898), who was a gear-box specialist. The other was Josef Kales (born in 1901), anaero-engine designer. Kales devoted most of his time to theproblems of the Volkswagen and remained with that firm afterthe war. Josef Zahradnick (born in 1900) was also amongthose whom Porsche and Rabe first hired to help them inStuttgart in 1931. He was responsible for steering and front-suspension designs.

In those pre-computer days, the staff relied on one manfor its theoretical computations: Josef Mickl. Born in 1885,Mickl was the oldest member of the team apart from Ferdi-nand Porsche himself. He first worked for Porsche in 1917and was at his desk in the Kronenstrasse office as soon as itsdoors opened in December 1930. When calculations of vibra-tion frequencies, performance characteristics or structuralstresses were needed, Mickl made them. With a backgroundas an aircraft designer in Austria and Yugoslavia, he took aspecial interest in the aerodynamic problems of automobiles.Mickl was the key man behind the design of a Land SpeedRecord contender prepared by Porsche in 1937 and built byDaimler-Benz.

Also concerned with body design, but in a quite differentway, was Erwin Franz Komenda. He came to Porsche inNovember 1931 from Daimler-Benz, where he’d beendeputy director of production-car body design at therespected Sindelfingen plant. Born in 1904, Komenda hadlearned his trade in Steyr and then in Vienna with a firm that

Ferry Porsche, at the wheel, helped design and test the 1932 Wanderer.

THE PEOPLE OF PORSCHE

7

made heavy coaches. He was drawn into the budding auto-mobile business, where his capacity for infinite detail wasappreciated. Intense and positive in all his views, even to theextent of defying his boss’s instructions (something few atPorsche dreamed of doing), Komenda was at heart a kindand deeply thoughtful man. He, Mickl, Reimspiess and Raberemained stalwarts of the Porsche organization through theearly 1960s.

Knit tightly into a team by their mutual respect, commonnationality and veneration of Porsche, these were the menwho, in the late 1930s, were eager to enrich the motoringworld with variations on the basic Volkswagen theme. The fac-tory then being built at Fallersleben was intended to produce150,000 cars in its first year and to build up eventually to tentimes that volume. Clearly more than a sedan and convertiblewould be needed to assure continuing demand sufficient tosupport that kind of volume.

Other VW versions were quickly planned. Type 66 was aright-hand-drive model, Type 67 was an invalid vehicle1, andType 68 was a small panel van. The Type 62 was an open-sided cross-country variant with high ground clearance. Even-tually it provided the foundation for the military Type 82

Kübelwagen that was to become justly famous during WorldWar II. As wartime needs intensified, it was followed by thefour-wheel-drive Type 87 and the famed and versatileSchwimmwagen, the amphibian Type 166.

Seeds of a Sports Car: Types 64 and 114Thoughts of Wehrmacht-green Volkswagens going to warwere still far away in 1937 when the Porsche designerssketched the specifications of another member of the VWfamily, the Type 64. This was to be a sports car, the kind ofsporting variation that Ferdinand Porsche liked to engineerfor each of his new car designs. This was partly to satisfy hisown enthusiasm for fast cars and partly as a means of push-ing each concept nearer its limits. Instead of the standardcar’s 1.0-liter engine, for example, the paper study for theType 64 proposed an enlargement to 1.5 liters. Other designchanges made the Type 64 a distinctly different kind of VW,with an aluminum body and a top-speed potential of 90 to95 mph.

“What are our prospects for building this car? May wehave a budget to build some prototypes?” Porsche representa-tives posed such questions to Ley and Lafferentz during meet-ings in late 1937 and early 1938. The replies were notencouraging. Building and selling a production sports car didnot suit the immediate plans of the German Labor Front,which wanted to project a responsible image. In 1938, afterall, the German people had just begun paying their hard-wonsavings into a giant layaway plan to buy KdF-Wagens.

The successes of the rear-engined Auto Union (here in the 1935Coppa Acerbo) brought worldwide fame to the still-new Porschedesign organization.

1. Although the description of this variant is no more detailed than that given, it isbelieved that this is a Type 60 adapted for use by handicapped drivers.

CHAPTER 1 GENESIS IN GMÜND | 1900–1946

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In spite of this rejection, Porsche’s people believed enoughin the potential of a car like the Type 64 to try a newapproach to getting it into production. They decided toexplore the possibility of building it themselves. This wouldmark a full turn of the wheel for the Porsche family, fromworking for other car makers to becoming an auto producer intheir own right. Looking beyond the design work Porsche was

then doing on the VW project, which seemed certain to be oneof the biggest the firm could ever hope to get, the idea of actu-ally producing a car offered financial security for the future.Porsche could start out in a small way, in its own new works inZuffenhausen, expanding later in response to demand.

It had occurred to Ferdinand Porsche as early as 1922 thathe might go into the automobile business on his own. Thiswas, said Ferry Porsche in an interview with Panorama, “anold idea of my father’s. When he left Austro-Daimler to go toMercedes, he had the idea to do something a little like whatBugatti had done, and it was a question of having enoughmoney to start a factory or to go to Mercedes as technicalmanager. At that time he didn’t have enough money, so he

Top left: Zuffenhausen became Porsche’s home in June 1938. Themove to these new quarters also supported the planning effort forthe Volkswagen car and factory.

Top right: The Type 82 Kübelwagen was produced by Volkswagenduring World War II.

Bottom: On the eve of war in 1938, Porsche shows Hitler the VW.

went to Mercedes.” Now, when Professor Porsche was begin-ning to have money, he felt the urge again.

Because the Type 64 used many components from theType 60, the Porsche company approached Labor Front offi-cials to make arrangements for buying Type 60 parts in quan-tity for use in its sports car. This request was also turneddown, but for a different reason. Probes of the relevant lawsby both parties had concluded that there was no legal way agovernment-owned company, namely the VW factory, couldsell goods to a private firm like Porsche. That decision endedfor the time being any and all thoughts of a Porsche sports carbased on VW parts.

But the Porsches father and son had given so much consid-eration to producing a sports car of their own that they couldnot shake off the idea. In 1938 they decided to pursue it fur-ther in spite of all the obstacles they had encountered. SinceVW components weren’t to be made available, they put asmall group of designers to work on a completely specialsports car that was called the F-Wagen, for both Ferry andFerdinand, carrying the designation of Type 114. The engineermost responsible for its creation was Karl Fröhlich. He keptdesign work moving ahead as quickly as he could, although asa nonpaying project the Type 114 drawings often had to bepushed aside to complete a job for a Porsche customer.

The Type 114 was never built; indeed, the detailed engi-neering drawings that would have been needed to build it

were never completed. But by January 3, 1939, when KarlFröhlich signed the drawing of its overall chassis layout, it wascompletely planned in every important detail: a magnificentPorsche sports car primed and ready to launch the family’sown automobile business.

The F-Wagen was an extraordinary conception. Not foranother quarter-century would Porsche build a car of its ownof comparable complexity. In its broadest outline, the layoutof the F-Wagen showed a familial resemblance to the Porschedesign that had been known at first as the P-Wagen, thefamous Auto Union Grand Prix car. Its engine was locatedbetween the passengers and the rear axle, and its transmissionwas overhung to the rear of the axle. These elements alonemade the Type 114 a radical automobile for its time. But itsmost surprising attribute was surely its ten-cylinder vee-typeengine of 1.5 liters (1,493 cc, 58 x 56.5 mm).

The choice of ten cylinders was radical for the time, butnot unique. In the late 1930s, engines of both five and tencylinders were being advocated in technical circles and werebeing experimented with by Ford. Lancia even put a five-cylinder into production. Designers saw the V-10 as a usefuland logical compromise, shorter than the V-12 yet offeringmore power, through higher speeds, than a V-8 of the samedisplacement. The Porsche team chose the V-10 configura-tion to power two vehicles it was working on in 1938: itsType 100 tank prototype2 for the German Army, which

SEEDS OF A SPORTS CAR: TYPES 64 AND 114

9

Below, left and right: The V-10 1.5-liter engine designed for the PorscheType 114 had shaft drive to its four overhead camshafts, three downdraftcarburetors and a water pump driven directly by the crankshaft nose.

2. The military designation of this 30-ton medium tank was VK3001(P). Knownalso as the “Leopard,” it was produced only in the form of two prototypes.

CHAPTER 1 GENESIS IN GMÜND | 1900–1946

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required two 15.0-liter air-cooled V-10s, and the Type 114sports car.

With a 72-degree angle between its banks—the correctvalue to give evenly spaced firing impulses—the enginedesigned for the Type 114 would have been the most ambi-tious 1.5-liter engine of its time, as sublimely intricate as aSwiss watch. In both this angle and its use of ten cylinders,the Type 114 engine accurately foreshadowed the Formula 1racing engines of the end of the twentieth century. Porsche’sten were to have aluminum heads. Wet cylinder liners in analuminum block were to extend down well past the crankcenterline to a split line that sloped down toward the rear,

between the block and sump, as had that of theAuto Union V-16.

In the design, all the crankshaft bearings werelow-friction rollers, and the six main bearings hadremovable caps and split outer races. The rod jour-nals were to be assembled in such a way that theconnecting rods could have strong one-piece bigends—a method developed by Hirth, the Stuttgartspecialists. Domed pistons poked their crowns intodeep hemispherical combustion chambers contain-ing two valves symmetrically inclined at anincluded angle of 88 degrees. Twin coil springs andpivoted fingers comprised the valve gear, and thetwin overhead camshafts on each bank were drivenby shafts and bevel gears at the rear end of theengine. Each inlet camshaft was turned by a shaftfrom the crank, and a short relay shaft from theinlet bevel drove each exhaust camshaft.

A magneto for each bank of the Type 114engine was to be driven from the back of each inletcamshaft. Three single-throat downdraft carbure-tors were to be squeezed between the banks on alog manifold; at the planning stage no superchargerwas contemplated. Through a single-disc clutch, theV-10 was to drive a transaxle with a five-speedgearbox. Its top four ratios were to be constant-mesh with engagement by dog clutches. A takeoffpulley from the rear of its input shaft was to drive abelt to a rear-mounted generator.

Fröhlich’s design for the F-Wagen’s suspensionfollowed the classic Porsche pattern of the period,much like that of the Volkswagen. It called for therear wheels to be mounted on swing axles, guidedby flexible trailing arms from a torsion bar held ina transverse tube. Front wheels were to be sprungby parallel trailing arms and transverse torsionbars. These systems were to be connected by aladder-type tubular frame with oval-sectionlongerons, five inches deep, kicked up at the rearover the swing axles. The plans specified finned

drum brakes 11¾ inches (300 mm) in diameter, set inside17-inch disc wheels with pin-drive knock-off hubs. Rims 3¼inches wide were to carry 5.50x17 tires, with the sparemounted in the nose.

Styled by Erwin Komenda to suit the two-passenger mid-engined chassis, the Type 114 body resembled a stretchedVolkswagen. A scale model made for wind-tunnel testingshowed a pointed tail; a low, flat nose; and flush, pontoonfenders with enclosed rear wheels. Differing from the VW wasthe grille in its nose for the coolant radiator, which in the ini-tial design was mounted ahead of the 14.8-gallon fuel tank.This layout had been changed by January 1939, when theradiator was moved to the rear, just ahead of the engine,where it was cooled by a turbine-bladed suction fan. This

The five-speed transaxle designed for the Type 114 (opposite) drovethrough a ZF limited-slip differential.

required the wheelbase to be stretched from 106.3 to 108.3inches, while the track stayed the same at 53.2 inches.

These were the essentials of the Type 114, an ingenioussports car like none other in the world, the car the Porscheshoped to produce themselves as soon as the growing tensionsin Europe had subsided—perhaps after a year or so. In themeantime they were recompensed for part of the designwork when the engine and transaxle plans of the 114 wereused in planning a 1.5-liter racing car (designated Type 116)which was contracted and paid for by the Volkswagen works.VW never built and raced this car, but it came close to doingso in 1939 with a simpler sports car—one looking much like

the Type 114 that came from the same drawing boards inZuffenhausen.

Plans for new racing and sports cars were still being madeas late as 1939 in Germany, for there had been no signals,either to or from those in charge of auto racing, that theirfavorite pastime would be suspended by a major war. Motorsport in the Third Reich was under the centralized control ofthe National Socialist Motoring Corps, the NSKK, and itsKorpsführer, Major Hühnlein. A long-time Hitler crony, thegruff and blustering Hühnlein had total jurisdiction over allsporting uses of cars in Germany. Part of this control wasexercised through the Oberste Nationale Sportbehörde orONS, the Highest National Sporting Authority. This was thebody which was internationally recognized to sanction racesand record runs in Germany, which it did with traditionalNazi meticulousness, pomp and panoply.

Local events, chiefly in the formats of rallies and trials,were organized by NSKK paramilitary groups and brigades

SEEDS OF A SPORTS CAR: TYPES 64 AND 114

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Top left: The Type 114 was to have an oval-tube ladder frame, kicked upover its rear swing axles. Front-radiator layout is at left.

Top right: Wind-tunnel test model, showing grille for the front radiator

Bottom left and right: Sketches show final design with the radiator atthe engine. Porsche’s planned production car, the Type 114, had its V-10engine placed above the rear torsion-bar tube (bottom right).

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Top: In September 1938 two different body layouts were prepared forthe Type 114 in its original front-radiator form. One was a wide sports-touring body, with seating space for three.

Bottom: The wider coupe’s designation was Type 114K1. This narrowertwo-seater coupe design for the mid-engined Porsche-to-be, plannedfor competition, was identified as the Type 114K2.

during the 1930s, while big national competitions were stagedunder ONS direction. These included a winter trial in Febru-ary, a three-day mountain trial in June and late in the decade,a German Alpine Rally in July. Not since 1934, however,when they had staged the 2,000-kilometer event in whichFerry Porsche had driven a Wanderer, had the NSKK and ONSorganized a big open-road race on the lines of the MilleMiglia. In 1938 they decided to get back in that business in aneven more spectacular way.

Berlin to Rome: Type 60K10In cooperation with his counterparts in Italy, KorpsführerHühnlein planned one of the most audacious races ever con-ceived. They scheduled it for September 1939. The starting

point was to be Berlin, the cars racing south from there overthe newly completed Autobahn to Munich. They’d continuesouth through the Austrian panhandle over the Brenner Passto Italy, then race over local roads, closed to other traffic, allthe way to the finish line in Rome. This Berlin-Rome Racewas to traverse three nations from capital to capital over800 highway miles, an epic event with unlimited propa-ganda potential.

For the Porsche and KdF-Wagen staff in Zuffenhausen, thisrace promised a publicity bonanza. Although construction ofthe Fallersleben plant was lagging, the first manufacture ofVolkswagen cars was still projected for September 1939 andthe first deliveries for early 1940. The Berlin-Rome Race wasa made-to-order opportunity to demonstrate to the world theguts and character of this new German automobile. Of coursethe stock KdF-Wagen would be out of its element, with only24 hp from 985 cc and a top speed of about 65 mph. Still,

BERLIN TO ROME: TYPE 60K10

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In the Type 60K10 body designed for the VW-to-be for the Berlin-RomeRace, staggered seating was used to achieve a narrow roof line. Twospare wheels were stored under the front deck.

argued Ferdinand Porsche, specialcars could be built on the Type60 chassis that would performextremely well.

Thus persuaded, Hühnlein’sONS placed an order withPorsche for the design and con-struction of three special sportscars based on the Type 60. Finan-cial backing came from the LaborFront of Ley and Lafferentz.3

Although they had just turneddown Porsche’s plans for puttingthe Type 64 sports car into pro-duction, they too saw the public-ity advantages to be gleaned byentering a KdF-Wagen in theBerlin-Rome competition.

Designed in the fall of 1938and completed in the early sum-mer of 1939, three cars werebuilt specially for that contestand were designated Type60K10, indicating that each consisted of a Type 60 chassis fit-ted with a special body (K for Karosserie). The K series,which included early studies for the Volkswagen body designand some other styles besides the Type 60K10, ran up to theK12 level.

Planning already done at Porsche on the Type 64 sports cargave it a head start on engineering work on the 60K10.Retained intact was the normal Volkswagen platform frameand its suspension system. Thus wheelbase and trackremained standard at 94.5 and 50.6 inches respectively.Larger valves, twin carburetors and a higher compressionratio boosted engine power to over 50 bhp, more than twiceits normal output. It was also developed to be reliable at peakoutput, so the car could take full advantage of the high speedsthat were possible between Berlin and Munich on the Auto-bahn leg of the race.

That fast stretch of road was also to be exploited fully bythe special aluminum coupe body built for the car by Reutterof Stuttgart. Its design, by Komenda, resembled that of theType 114 being planned in parallel, but it was even moreextreme, with pants enclosing all four wheels and a minusculecoupe cabin. As did the 114, it also kept the window pattern,rear-deck louvers and front-deck surface embellishment of anormal Volkswagen—aesthetic touches which were essential ifthe three racers were to have any value in promoting sales ofthe standard KdF-Wagen.

The coupe’s roof lines were so narrow that it looked like asingle-seater, but the car actually managed to accommodatetwo people by having the passenger seat staggered about a

foot to the rear of the driver’s seat. A large fuel tank was setinto the space thus cleared on the right side of the car’s nose.The battery was stowed behind the driver. There was roomunder the long nose for two spare wheels and tires, which saton a common plane. The completed car weighted less than1,200 pounds.

Capable of reaching and maintaining a timed maximumspeed of 90 mph, the 60K10 was tailored perfectly to the spe-cial needs of the Berlin-Rome event. Three cars were ready,but the race was not. By September 1939, it was obvious thata major war was under way and that such a race could not beheld, even on the home territory of the Axis powers. Insteadof being used as racers, the three coupes became valuable anddistinctive personal transportation. One was used by BodoLafferentz until he bent it in a collision with another car.Although its damage seemed repairable, this coupe appearsnot to have survived the war.

The two other coupes remained in the hands of thePorsches. One was used occasionally by Jakob Werlin, and theother was driven by Ferdinand Porsche and Josef Goldinger,his chauffeur. At least one of these was given better visibilityfor road use by fitting the windshield and side windows withslimmer frames and larger panes of glass. At the same time,the wiper pivots were moved from above to below the wind-shield. These deep-skirted coupes had flip-out trafficators intheir fender sides and twin Bosch horns built into the nose.

Because it was often the fastest means of getting around,Professor Porsche made frequent use of his Type 60K10.

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Erwin Komenda was successful in retaining a visual resemblance to thenormal Volkswagen in the Type 60K10, built in 1939 to the order of theGerman Labor Front.

3. The Sporting Authority also ordered three special roadsters for the race from BMW.

Along the Autobahns that radiated out of Stuttgartt it scuttledat high speeds, narrow beams of light from its blackout-masked headlights penetrating the foggy Swabian gloom.There wasn’t much traffic on German roads during the early1940s, so excellent averages could be maintained. Porscheand Goldinger once arrived at the Hotel Bristol in the centerof Berlin just one-and-a-half hours after leaving Fallersleben.That amounted to a door-to-door average speed of about 85mph achieved over ordinary local roads!

Honors and ArmamentsFerdinand Porsche was kept very much on the move by boththe honors and the responsibilities that came his way inincreasing numbers. He had already received two honoraryengineering doctorates from technical academies, the first inVienna in 1917 and the second in Stuttgart in 1924. He wasawarded a German National Prize in 1938, was named the offi-cial Reich Auto Designer, and in 1940 he was presented withan honorary professorship by the Stuttgart Technical Academy.

Of more than academic interest was Professor Porsche’s1940 appointment to the presidency of the Armor Commis-sion of the Ministry of Arms and Munitions. During the nextfive years, his time was spent amid the mud of military prov-ing grounds and the tattoo of rivet guns in huge tank assemblyhalls rather than on the racing circuits he loved so much.Porsche plunged his organization into the design of armoredmilitary vehicles with the same enthusiasm that had alreadymade his firm famous in other fields.

This wasn’t a new discipline forPorsche, for he had worked on weaponry,including an amazingly advanced eight-wheeled personnel carrier, at Daimler-Benz in the 1920s. In 1941 the Porscheoffice followed up its Type 100 tank pro-totypes with its 57-ton Type 101, alsoknown as the Tiger (P).4 Type 103 was avariation, with hydraulic drive instead ofthe electric drive that Porsche preferred.Powering these tanks were two V-10 air-cooled gasoline engines. Fitted withSolex carburetors and magneto ignition,these had pushrod-operated overheadvalves and developed up to 320 bhp at2,500 rpm, albeit not reliably enough toqualify them for battlefield use. Five hadbeen completed when production washalted; Henschel’s version, the Tiger (H),was commissioned instead.

Hopes had been so high for the Tiger(P) that production of its hulls had beenforging ahead. These and some addi-

tional chassis, powered by Maybach V-12 engines, were usedinstead as the basis for 90 Elefant anti-tank vehicles pro-duced in April and May of 1943.5 Another series of tankdesigns, the Type 180 and 181, was outlined on paper, butonly a turret was built, early in 1942. Porsche-designed tur-rets contributed to the success of the 68-ton Henschel-builtTiger II tank. In June of that year, Porsche prepared its firstdrawings for the Type 205 or Maus, a 180-ton colossus envi-sioned by Adolf Hitler as a movable bunker, a battleship forwar on land. Powering it was an enlarged version of the Type212, an X-pattern 16-cylinder air-cooled diesel conceived foruse in smaller tanks.

The seeds of these armored giants sprouted from the fertilesoil of Austria, which had nourished so much of Porsche’screativity. Links with the Professor’s old associates at Austro-Daimler and Steyr were exceptionally close. The Type 212engine was built in Vienna at the engine- and vehicle-producing firm of Graz-Simmering-Pauker, while Porsche’stanks and prototypes were fabricated at the Nibelung Worksat St. Valentin, just north of Steyr, a plant which was operatedby Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Installed there as chief designer wasPorsche’s Franz Xaver Reimspiess.

Porsche’s attention was frequently needed at St. Valentin. Itwas also demanded at the VW plant at Fallersleben, where hisson-in-law was his deputy, and at Peugeot’s factories in France,which had been placed under the authority of the KdF plant

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Three Type 60K10 coupes were made. With blackout masks on theheadlights, as shown, they served as high-speed transport during thewar for Ferdinand Porsche and others.

4. Its military designation was VK4501(P).

5. Originally known as the “Ferdinand,” the Elefant—with its 88 mm cannon—was ready in time to take on the Soviet T-34 in the epic tank battle at Kursk inthe summer of 1943.

during the German occupation. Of course Porsche’s presencewas also required in Berlin and expected at least two days aweek in Zuffenhausen, at the main design office which was thenunder Ferry Porsche’s direction. There the family was drawn tothe Ferdinand Porsche villa, with its steeply-gabled tile roof,number 48 on the Feuerbacher Weg, high on a hill overlookingStuttgart. Relaxation was snatched whenever possible at thefamily’s Austrian farming estate at Zell am See, south ofSalzburg. To the southeast, near Klagenfurt in Carinthia, theten-mile-long Wörth Lake had been a favorite summer holidayspot for the Porsches since the early years of the century.

These were but some of the destinations on the crowdedwartime itinerary of Ferdinand Porsche. Porsche people trav-eled so much that berths on sleeper trains were booked for

them on a daily basis. After sharp differences with AlbertSpeer, the Reich armaments minister, Porsche was moved outof his Armor Commission job to a more elevated and mainlyornamental post, that of Reich armaments councilor. His con-tinued advocacy of exotic drives, engines and suspensions fortanks at a time when Germany needed mass productionrather than the ultimate in sophistication had earned Porschea “mad scientist” reputation in some circles.

Ideas for advanced armor kept rolling out of the designoffice at Zuffenhausen and the plant at St. Valentin. The moun-tainous Maus was shown to work amazingly well in one of thetwo completed examples. Drawings and models were preparedof a relative dwarf, the 18-ton multipurpose Type 245. A simi-lar stage was reached with the design of the Type 250, a turret-less tank with a 105 mm gun. One of Porsche’s last militaryprojects was the Type 293, laid down in the summer of 1944by order of the SS. A personnel carrier rolling on either wheelsor tracks, it had to be developed with parts made in Italybecause Stuttgart was under increasingly heavy bombardment.

Versatility as well as volume marked the wartime Porschecontribution. It produced many variations on the Volkswagentheme. Almost as ambitious was another Reich-supportedPorsche endeavor, the Volkspflug or “people’s plow,” designedto motorize the German farmer. This was a small yet versatiletractor designed to do all the tugging and tilling that oxennormally performed on small farms in Germany. Conceivedlate in 1937, the first Volkspflug design was the Type 110, fol-lowed by successive type numbers through 113 as develop-ment continued into 1940. Plans were made for a vast factoryat Waldbröl, near Cologne, to make as many as 300,000 trac-tors a year. In 1944 this dream was allowed to die along withso many other aspirations of the Third Reich.

Nor was this all the work being done by the Porsche staff.It designed the Type 175 Ostradschlepper (“wheeled Eastern-Front tractor”) of 1942, a heavy truck with huge steel-trackedwheels. A throwback to some of Porsche’s World War I cre-ations, it was built to tow artillery pieces through the gumboof the Russian front, but military conditions changed beforethe Skoda-built vehicle could be properly tested. Porsche alsobuilt a VW engine fitted with a special Roots-type super-charger, which was to power portable aerial tramways in therarefied Alpine atmosphere. One such engine, delivering 45horsepower, propelled the bright-green Volkswagen cabrioletthat Ferry Porsche used throughout the war.

Then there was the Porsche-designed Volkswindkraftwerkor “people’s wind power plant.” Inspired by the irrepressibleBodo Lafferentz as another product for the huge works atFallersleben, this new electricity-generating plant was a mod-ern three-bladed version of the windmill. Designated Types135, 136 and 137 (signifying three levels of generatingpower), such units, when mounted on high towers, were topower the farm settlements that were to be established inGermany’s newly-won Lebensraum in Russia—“living space”which, of course, never became permanently available.

CHAPTER 1 GENESIS IN GMÜND | 1900–1946

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Top: One of the few Porsche armored designs to see World War IIservice was the mobile assault cannon “Ferdinand.”

Bottom: The mammoth 180-ton Type 205 Maus, was tested atBöblingen near Stuttgart in June 1944.

Preserving the LegacyThrough 1943 and the early months of 1944, when Alliedbombers roamed more and more freely above Germany’sindustrial centers, the home base of the Porsche teamremained at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen—even though manyother firms had been dispersed to more sparsely settledregions. In April of 1944, however, after the first bombs fellon the KdF plant at Fallersleben, Ferdinand Porsche becamehighly agitated. The company’s archives, he complained to hisson, were stored in the attics of the office buildings, wherethey were very vulnerable to air attack. He insisted that theyshould be moved at once to the cellar, where they would bebetter protected.

The precaution had already been taken of triplicating theoriginal drawings. One of the additional sets was stored in thePorsche villa and the other was at the Stuttgart residence ofGhislaine Kaes, Professor Porsche’s nephew and personal sec-

retary. They were stored in special locked containers of sheetsteel. The spares were destined to come in handy. Just eightdays after the archives had been moved to the Zuffenhausencellar, an Allied bomber released a single bomb that plum-meted at such an angle that it bored straight into the cellar,missing everything else but incinerating the drawings. It wasfinally evident that at least some of the Porsche team wouldhave to move.

In fact the decision was no longer theirs alone. His differ-ences with Ferdinand Porsche apart,Albert Speer made it clearthat the Porsche brainpower was to be moved to less haz-ardous surroundings—and fast. Ferry Porsche took on thetask. Applying first to the authorities in Stuttgart, he wasoffered a site in Czechoslovakia. He was wary of this, how-ever. Ferry decided to bypass the Reich bureaucracy by inquir-

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Ferdinand Porsche rides the “Ferdinand” on its left front corner, whileAlbert Speer mans the controls.

ing in Salzburg about possible Austrian locations. He foundone at a flying school in Zell am See. This would have beenideal because it actually adjoined the Porsche family property.But it was too small. Another site was proposed: a formersawmill in the tiny town of Gmünd, remote, lacking any railconnections, but big enough for Porsche’s offices and shops.

In the end Porsche used both Austrian locales. The flyingschool at Zell was used chiefly for storage. Ferry Porschedivided all the important machine tools into three groups,

each as much like the others as possible.One group remained in Zuffenhausen, onewas taken to Gmünd and the third wasstored at Zell am See. Recalls Ferry, “Myidea was that we could always make a freshstart as long as we had one-third.” Vehiclesalso went to Zell, including one of the sur-viving Berlin-Rome 60K10 coupes.

The move to Gmünd was made duringthe late autumn of 1944. This was a timefor many decisions that were human ratherthan political or technical. Naturally, theAustrians who held leading positions on thePorsche staff were among those who leastresisted the idea of returning to their home-land, especially (they admitted mainly tothemselves) because conditions in Germanywere worsening rapidly. German-bornemployees tended to remain in Stuttgart.

Many of those who did go to Gmündreturned home in the last months of thewar to be nearer their relatives. Moreover,as Germany succumbed, the atmosphere inAustria grew increasingly inhospitable forGerman nationals. Meanwhile, to providehomes for many of the Gmünd emigrants,ten two-family houses were put up on agravelly area near the river junction thatgave Gmünd its name. They were of a stan-dardized modular design that the Germanswere using widely at that time.

Acting now with his father’s full author-ity, 35-year-old Ferry Porsche took com-mand of operations at Gmünd. Karl Rabereported to him as technical director andHans Kern as financial director. Kern hadjoined Porsche in 1933 at the invitation ofHans Baron Veyder-Malberg, who was thensales manager and a part-owner of the firm.By 1942, Kern had become fully responsi-ble for the financial affairs of the Porsche

KG. Holding the fort in Zuffenhausen was Karl Fröhlich, whomaintained a liaison with the team in Gmünd. Incredibly, workon such projects as the second prototype of the mammothMaus continued—in utter defiance of reality—into early April.

Perils of PeaceWith Hitler’s Reich reeling under the attacks of the Allies anddoomed to imminent collapse, the Porsche clan gathered atthe Zell am See estate. The elder Porsche and his wife werethere, as were his son and daughter and their families. Theywere awaiting the arrival of the occupying authorities. Britishofficers and troops arrived in May. Their technical representa-tives questioned the Professor, in a preliminary way, at Zell.

CHAPTER 1 GENESIS IN GMÜND | 1900–1946

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Top: No external sign showed that the Porsche Gmünd office, withFerry’s cabriolet in the drive, was anything but a sawmill.

Bottom: Inside the former sawmill at Gmünd, machine tools wereinstalled for making farm equipment, machinery and vehicle prototypes.

The Porsches’ world changed sharply in mid-1945, as it hadfor everyone in Europe. “We had some money,” recalled Ferry,“but it was blocked from us because we were ‘German.’” Newbarriers were thrown across the Austrian and German land-scapes by the occupation authorities. Zell am See was in theAmerican-ruled zone of Austria and cordoned off fromGmünd, which was in the British zone. There Karl Rabe hadbeen placed in charge of the sawmill engineers by the British.In Zuffenhausen, the Porsche offices were commandeered bythe Americans, whose occupation zone included Stuttgart. KarlKirn, a man born in that part of Germany in 1909, was desig-nated trustee of the Porsche property there.

For these men of extraordinary engineering skills andexperience the outlook was bleak. “If your father were ashoemaker,” one of the British authorities told Louise Piëch,“he would surely make shoes, but he will never design auto-mobiles again.” As yet, no new plan for postwar Germanyhad been put forward to replace the one formulated by theAllies at their joint conference in September 1944. Known asthe Morgenthau Plan, after the then-US Secretary of theTreasury who had helped in its formulation, it proposed thevirtual elimination of German industry and anticipated “con-verting Germany into a country primarily agricultural andpastoral in character.”

Agriculture, at least, was a key word to the designers atGmünd, who had never stopped thinking about tractors.With no immediate hope of seeing them built, the Porscheteam worked in the autumn of 1945 on the Type 309 engine,a small two-stroke diesel suitable either for the VW or a trac-

tor, and on the Type 312, 313, 323and 328 tractor designs. Not until halfa decade later would these ideas cometo even partial fruition. In the mean-time the Gmünd machine tools wereused to make tractor accessories,carts, winches, lifts for transportinglogs—whatever was needed. AnalystMickl applied his erudition to thedesign of small, efficient water tur-bines, suitable as power sources forindividual farms. In the workshop atZell am See, a nephew of ProfessorPorsche, Herbert Kaes, once a liaisonengineer between the Porsche KG andthe German Army, directed the repairof those vehicles that could make theirway to his door.

Meanwhile, in July 1945 ProfessorPorsche had been formally invited tojoin the many officials and technicianswho were being interviewed by theAllies at a castle (code-named “Dust-

bin”) on the outskirts of Frankfurt. Freed from Dustbin afterthree months, he returned to Zell. In November 1945, how-ever, a chain of events began that was eventually to shortenthe life of Ferdinand Porsche. He and his son were invited toBaden-Baden in the French zone of Germany to discuss theexciting prospect of a rebirth in France of the apparentlymoribund Volkswagen. While conferring there in December,Porsche was arrested by a rival French political faction. Alsoarrested were his son and son-in-law, who had been helpinghim in the negotiations.

On trumped-up charges of misconduct with respect to pris-oners of war and workers at the Peugeot plant, FerdinandPorsche and Anton Piëch were imprisoned first in Baden-Baden and then in Paris and Dijon, where conditions weredeplorable. Others in his family and staff were cleared afterinternments of various durations. Among them was FerryPorsche, who was released from his detainment in a BlackForest hotel in late July 1946.

During this difficult time the family’s interests were lookedafter by one of its strongest members, Ferdinand Porsche’sdaughter Louise Piëch. As one of the family members put it,“She was the one out of prison.” Her persistence and deter-mination led to the establishment, with her brother, of thePorsche Konstruktionen GmbH, or Porsche Design Corpora-tion, in Austria in 1946. Under this new umbrella the familybegan to plan for their future.

To Louise Piëch too came one of the slender threads theywere to follow toward that future. It was a letter from a youngmotorcycle racer named Karl,Vienna-born but now living inMerano in Italy’s South Tyrol. He had Italicized his given nameto make it more mellifluous to Italian ears: Carlo Abarth.

PERILS OF PEACE

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A large wooden hall, in a valley in the Reisseck mountains in Austria,housed the Porsche workshops.

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At Sebring in January of 2008 the Penske team’s RS Spyder strutted its stuff in the ALMS practice session, showing that despite a weight penalty it still had the credentials to lead the field.Photo courtesy Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG

Porsche brazenly broke free of its sport-car niche with the launch of its Leipzig-built Cayenne in 2002. In this sport-utility developed in cooperation with Volkswagen, the emphasis was on “sport.”Photo courtesy Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG

New 2008 Revised Edition

At the Watkins Glen Six Hours, 1970, a Carrera 6 (Bartling/ Peterman/Ranier) leads the third-place finisher, a Ferrari 512S (Andretti/Giunti). Victory went to two Porsche 917’s.Photo by Barry Tennin

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About the AuthorAuthor Karl Ludvigsen is among today’s most respected automotive historians. He has served as technical editor of Auto Age and Sports Cars Illustrated magazines, as east coast editor of Motor Trend and as editor of Car and Driver. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than three dozen books and reports about cars and the motor industry.

Author Karl Ludvigsen. 1988 Type 911 Carrera.Illustration by Carmen Console