Porsche [antikvár]

8 THE PORSCHE TRADITION Ferdinand Anton Porsche was born in 1875 of a Roman Catholic family at Maffersdorf, a town in that most turbulent of political and cultural areas, Bohemia, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He seems to have been a precocious youngster, fitting new-fangled electric lighting to his father's house while still a teenager. He upset his father by going to a technical college, where he received a rudimentary but solid education, rather than joining the family tinsmiths shop. He served an apprenticeship at an electrical firm in Vienna, and then at 23 years of age joined a company called Lohner. They were carriage-makers turned automobile manufacturers, making electrically-powered machines under license from the French Jeantaud firm: his electrical background thus came in useful. Two years after joining Lohner, in 1900, when he was just 25 years old, the first of the cars to bear his name appeared: the Lohner-Porsche. Young Porsche's ideas were revolutionary. In the Lohner-Porsche the batteries drove the front wheels via hub-mounted motors. His next design was yet more brilliant. Since the batteries accounted for most of the weight of electric cars, he did away with them. In 1902 he introduced the Lohner-Porsche Mixte system, wherein a petrol engine drove a generator, which in turn drove the wheel-mounted motors. Even at this stage Porsche was a great racing enthusiast. He competed in both the ordinary electric car and one of the Mixte machines, gaining successes with both. In fact the Mixte arrangement was exceedingly versatile: during World War One he designed an extremely successful land train for the Austrian army. In 1905 Porsche was appointed technical head of Austro-Daimler. Here over the years, he was responsible for the Prince Henry model, an air-cooled flat-four aero engine and in 1921 the delightful little Sascha racing car, which achieved some success in the Targa Florlo, driven by the legendary Alfred Neubauer. One of his mechanics later became even more famous than either Porsche or Neubauer - we know him today as Marshal Tito. In 1916 Porsche was appointed Managing Director of Austro-Daimler; he received the Officer's Cross of Franz Joseph for his work on behalf of the war effort; and he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Technische Hoch-schule of Vienna. Long before this Porsche had married Aloisia Johanna Kaes, and had fathered two children - Louise In 1904 and in 1909 Ferdinand Anton Ernst, first nicknamed 'Ferdy,' later altered to 'Ferry." By 1923 Dr Porsche, always more interested in matters technical than financial, was at loggerheads with the backers of Austro-Daimler. He comes Previous pages: Professor Porsche's most prestigious design, the prewar Auto IJnion. Above: Ferdinand Anton Porsche. Left: Ferdinand Porsche (second from right, hands on hips) with the supercharged 1925 2-liter Mercedes. Above right: Porsche's first design, the Lohner-Porsche. incorporating his patent Mixte system of petrol-electric drive. Right: The Mixte system was developed to drive such massive machinery as this World War I land Train."