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Cart911 & Porsche World columns by Karl Ludvigsen
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The 917 Test Mystery
Success has many fathers and failure few, and thus it was with the test in the autumn of 1969 that made Porsche's 917 a real racing car for the first time. Two new books bring enlightenment where confusion once reigned.
One of the most enigmatic episodes in Porsche history was a Type 917 test session at Austria's new 3.73-mile Österreichring circuit, near Zeltweg, in the autumn of 1969. It was of great significance in several respects. It marked the first time that Porsche's engineers co-operated with the Gulf-backed John Wyer team in any racing effort. And it followed a troubled debut season for the 4.5-litre flat-12 917 whose drivers dubbed it 'The Ulcer' for its frighteningly wayward behaviour.
One enigmatic aspect of the test was its timing. Here's what I said in my history of Porsche:
'The shape of the 1970-model 917 was significantly affected by a test session at the Österreichring in August 1969. The site was convenient for testing because both the Porsche and JW teams were there for the 1,000-kilometre race that ended the endurance-racing season on August 10th. Both remained at Zeltweg for three days after the race for a test session managed by John Wyer and fully supported by Ferdinand Piëch and the rest of Porsche's top technical staff.'
I based my timing of the session on the testimony of Paul Frère, who wrote about 'the test runs for which the track was hired after the race,' which was won by a 917 driven by Jo Siffert and Kurt Ahrens-the model's first victory. As well I found a quote from Brian Redman, who said that in the tests 'I drove the car that I'd been driving in the race the day before, and it did the same time as in the race, and felt just as bad.' These assertions placed the test in mid-August. They were wrong, so I was too. And in fact neither John Wyer nor Ferdinand Piëch was present for the tests.
Two new books make the timing crystal clear. One is Racing in the Rain by John Horsman and the other is Porsche 917-Archiv und Werkverzeichnis 1968-1975 by Walter Näher. The former was chief engineer for the JW-Gulf team and the latter was a Porsche experimental engineer who was given full access to the 917 archives. They agree on the date of the Österreichring test: 14 through 17 October 1969. The first day, Tuesday, involved Porsche alone. The John Wyer crew arrived on the 15th, led by Horsman and JW team manager David Yorke.
Two 917 coupes in Group 5 configuration were available for the test. One was 917 006, which had been used for training at Le Mans, and the other was 917 008, which had led at Le Mans before retiring in the 21st hour. Both had 1969's short-tail layout. Instead of the original suspension-actuated rear spoilers, since the August race in Austria the spoilers were fixed in place albeit adjustable in their angles.
Major background for the test was the 917's unpredictable instability. JW-Gulf's contracted tyre supplier Firestone was on hand but refused to take part at first. 'We inquired what was happening and why they were not our there testing their tyres,' wrote John Horsman. 'They replied that they did not want to get the blame for the poor handling of the 917 and were not going to put their tyres on the car until it was sorted.' That's how poor its reputation was.
'We were the guests,' Horsman continued, 'and Porsche ran the show.' Led by experienced Zuffenhausen engineers Peter Falk and Helmut Flegl, Porsche started testing on Dunlop tyres on the 14th with drivers Brian Redman and Kurt Ahrens. Suspension experiments continued into the 15th with no significant improvement in behaviour or lap times. While their target was 1:46.6, turned in the August race by a Gulf Mirage-Ford, the best they'd managed so far was 1:48.2.
'In the clear, still autumn air of the Austrian hills,' John Horsman observed, 'there were clouds of gnats flying around, and their remains were splattered all over the nose and windscreen of both closed 917s. I noted there were hardly any dead gnats on the rear spoilers, which by now had been raised into near-vertical positions during the course of testing with no discernible effect on the handling. Since they were very small and light, I knew the gnats would flow over the bodywork exactly as the air flowed. Any gnat remnants on the white paint would indicate the air had touched that surface. This proved to me the airflow was barely touching the rear spoilers.
'I knew immediately that we had to raise the rear deck,' Horsman continued, 'and then attach small adjustable spoilers to the trailing edge. It was obvious to me that if the whole rear body surface was in the airstream it would be able to exert some downforce. So, supported by David Yorke, I asked Peter Falk and Helmut Flegl if we could "borrow" 917 008, as it was standing idle at the time. Somewhat puzzled, but wanting to be co-operative with the "Englanders", they said "Ja". And do you have any aluminium sheet in the trucks? "Ja." And could we borrow some snips, and pop rivets, and duct tape? "Ja."'
Now we've arrived at another enigmatic aspect of this test. Porsche's perspective on these events on 15 October differed somewhat. 'John Horsman came along and noticed that only the top edge of the spoiler was covered with dead bugs and oil spots,' related Peter Falk. 'So he said-and we saw it at exactly the same time-that the air was not going down to the bottom of the spoiler. He said that we could not build a car with a spoiler like that, but that we could build up the rear of the car with sheet aluminium. So that's exactly what his mechanics did. We had a lot of aluminium sheets prepared for this test, to make the spoilers higher and higher.'
Falk thus insinuates that Porsche was preparing to try a higher tail during the tests and that it was aware that it might be useful, but clearly it hadn't done so until Horsman suggested a trial. This has to be viewed against the background of the 917's origin. It was the personal creation of Ferdinand Piëch, now head of all Porsche engineering. From nose to tail it was designed as an ultra-low-drag racing car.
Downforce, or even the mitigation of lift, wasn't on Piëch's aerodynamic agenda. It's likely that any changes that would have increased drag-like a higher tail-would have been seen by Falk and Flegl as an admission of defeat. With the Englishmen doing it, they could divert any blame to them. Significantly Walter Näher's 917 book, based on the test reports in the archive, makes no specific mention of the British contribution. 'John Wyer's technicians' get a mention but with no indication of what they actually did.
Under Horsman's direction the 'desecration' of 917 008 was carried out by JW mechanics Ermanno Cuoghi and Peter Davies. 'To the horror of the German observers,' wrote Horsman, 'Ermanno and Peter snipped and riveted the rest of the afternoon but were not able to finish the job by the time the circuit closed.' When they wheeled it out the next morning, 'it looked very ugly, and Brian Redman was rather rude about it.' Peter Davies took the picture of the tail that appears in this column.
Redman it was who first took the aluminium-tailed 917 onto the Österreichring on the morning of 16 October. Instead of heading for the pits after a couple of laps, as before, he stayed out for seven. His first words on returning were, 'That's it-now it's a racing car!' 'Those were words of sheer joy to me,' recalled Horsman. 'After months of being a monster, the 917 was tamed.'
'It was a solution that came from all of us,' summed up Peter Falk. 'Later Mr. Wyer and Mr. Horsman said it was their work. And we naturally told Mr. Piëch that it was our work! But it was really teamwork.' Though overstating Porsche's role in the bodywork transformation, this comment did reflect the importance of the successful result, which proved to the Germans that their new English partners had something to offer.
Working back and forth the between the two 917 coupes, the engineers made them faster as well as better. With the wedge-profile tail the lap time dropped immediately to 1:45.6. With Firestone's tires plus chassis changes the time finally dropped to 1:43.2, to the credit of Kurt Ahrens.
'We thought we might have some trouble convincing Porsche to go along with the new shape,' said John Horsman, 'but they surprised us and were converted to the new gospel of downforce without any further discussion.' Such test results, which set the seal on the 917's successes of the next two seasons, couldn't be ignored.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porsche Junior
Though disappointed by Porsche's baroque '918 Spyder' concept car, our columnist hasn't given up hope. He suggests ways to address the urgent need for a new entry-level range and proffers a thought-provoking suggestion for its branding.
'Be careful what you wish for,' the saying goes, 'because you might just get it.' In the November 2009 issue of 911 & Porsche World I campaigned for a new concept car from our favourite sports-car maker.
'We urgently need to see a new concept Porsche,' I said, adding, 'The creation of a new Porsche concept car is vital for several reasons. First, after more than 50 years the 911 look and configuration has finally worn out its welcome. Porsche needs a new icon. Second, the Panamera shows definitively that Porsche has run out of styling ideas. Third, we're all worried about what will happen to Porsche in its new relationship to the VW Group. We need the reassurance of a concept that will prove that Porsche will be allowed to assert its own ideas.
'We need a new all-Porsche sports car,' I concluded, 'that will advance and enhance the inimitable character of the cars from Stuttgart. I look forward to seeing it as a concept car at Frankfurt in 2011.'
In the meantime Porsche's rivals have raised their game. With its magnificent 458 Italia, Ferrari has shown once again that's it's possible to have a new model that breaks fresh ground in styling while still looking like a Ferrari. Right in Porsche's own group, Audi's e-tron sports-car concepts push the state of the art in both styling and engineering. With its CR-Z hybrid, Honda threatens to redefine the sports car. The other guys aren't standing still.
Well, Porsche beat my timetable big time. At Geneva in March it showed a concept car, the 918 Spyder. The number that it chose for the car is interesting. This was the project number for a new range of mid-engined sports cars planned for 1973, created by engineering chief Ferdinand Piëch.
'For the 917 racing cars I had developed valve gear with twin overhead camshafts that worked well,' Piëch related. 'In my way of thinking it was logical to introduce a design feature into series production that was successful in motor sports. The development was complete, the production tools were ready. Nevertheless my cousin Peter Porsche, then head of production, blocked twin overhead camshafts for our production cars. His reasoning was that the old method still worked.' Fruitless and frustrating conflicts like this led to the 1971 decision that all Porsches and Piëchs were to leave the company.
Be that as it may, the abortion of Ferdinand Piëch's grand plan made number 918 available for Porsche's new concept. It also has nice echoes of the 917 and 908. And if Zuffenhausen would like my hints about other numbers that could be available, they are 913, 926, 927, 940, 941, 942, 955, 957, 958, 963, 967 and all those from 969 through 983.
When I was at the works in the days before Geneva I found the Porsche people in a state of excitement about the concept car that they would unveil there. Naturally I hoped it would mark a significant shift in strategy, establishing the new design direction that I asked for last November. The 918 was a big let-down. Clumsy and cluttered, it rehashes the whole worn-out vocabulary of Porsche design, swathed in scoops, louvres and spoilers to mask the basic shape's exhausted innocence of innovation and inspiration.
While the 918 is an entertaining technical toy, with its RS Spyder V8 engine and electric drive to the front wheels, it speaks to no known need save the amusement of the wealthiest Porsche dealers and their best friends. What those dealers should be lobbying for-and I'm sure are-is a new Porsche model at the other end of the price spectrum.
We've been here before. In 1987 Weissach's engineers addressed their company's need for a less costly sports car. The 924 was nearing the end of its run. Although plans for updating this entry-level Porsche were made under outgoing chief Peter Schutz, they were dropped after he left, the last 924S being produced in September 1988. This left a gap in Porsche's range that was glaringly obvious to its dealers, as they weren't slow to inform the company.
Studies for a successor were initiated on a product colloquially known as 'Porsche Junior' and more formally as the Type 984. Conceived as open roadsters, both front- and rear-engined versions of the 984 were considered. The rear-engined approach was favoured, both to avoid direct comparison with rivals and to draw on Porsche's traditions. Thoughts turned to air-cooled flat-four engines, one pair of possibilities being a 1.9-litre unit with 125 bhp and a 2.1-litre capable of 175 bhp.
One styling model of a potential 'Porsche Junior' revealed a high-sided roadster with a rounded nose and a long, flat-topped front bonnet into which its headlamps were steeply sloped in the style of the 928. Designer Wolfgang Möbius showed his touch in its meticulously beveled highlight surfaces and sheer flanks. Air inlets were low ahead of the rear wheels. The wheels themselves were of equal size front and rear and adapted a BBS-type spoke pattern in a bold, popped-out centre section.
Smaller, simpler and lighter though it was, the Type 984 was reluctant to yield a lower cost of production and, with that, a competitive retail price in the face of Porsche's limited-volume style of car making. By 1988 each dollar was returning to Porsche a niggardly 1.8 Deutschmarks, sometimes as little as 1.7. Finance man Heinz Branitzki had bought dollars forward at a better rate to protect income, but such currency hedging only helped in the short term, over months rather than years. Commitment to a smaller car meant smaller profits, so the Type 984 was rejected as unsuitable.
Still, the 984 offered some attractive attributes. One was that it was conceived from scratch as an open roadster. This set it clearly apart from the 911, a coupe first and foremost and offered only secondarily in open versions. As a two-seat roadster the 984 could have a strong appeal to people who liked the open style of sports car as exemplified by Mazda's MX-5 or Miata. Porsche wouldn't be competing directly with the Miata but it could position its car as a logical step up for Mazda drivers. And in some of its interpretations the 984 was mid-engined, in the tradition of Porsche's sports-racers. Here was a tradition with powerful appeal and another point of differentiation from the 911.
The mid-engined aspect of the Type 984 pointed the way to the Boxster, created by the imaginative merging of its front end with that of the 911. This was a brilliant solution to the credit of chief engineer at the time Horst Marchart. But with the rise and rise in prices of the 911 and the addition to the range of the Cayman as well, the Boxster is no longer an entry-level car. 'Do you think a 35-year-old can afford a new Boxster at 75,000 euros?' a senior Porsche man asked rhetorically during my visit. 'I don't think so!'
Porsche knows that it needs to slide a less expensive model into the bottom of its range. In the past this has been done in co-operation with Volkswagen, the 914 and 924 being the result. In those days the Wolfsburg outfit was an arm's-length partner. Now, of course, VW is in control of Porsche. In these circumstances the smaller company must do all that it can to assert and maintain its independence, much as Audi under Ferdinand Piëch managed to do even after it was wholly absorbed by VW.
Is manufacturing man Michael Macht up to the job of co-operating with VW in the creation of a new car without being dictated to by the German giant? In principle he knows what to do. 'A reduction in weight, a reduction in size-I think that's definitely a very exciting challenge to think about,' he said recently.
But how is a new model to be introduced without jeopardising Porsche's high-end brand value? Some think that the 914 and 924 degraded the Porsche image. One way to do it is to follow Ferrari's example. When a new cheaper range was introduced it carried a different brand-'Dino', named for Enzo Ferrari's first son. Only after the Dino models were well established did they become 'Ferraris'.
This could work for Porsche too. But what brand would be used? It should derive from the company's history while establishing a reputation of its own. I have a suggestion: 'Piëch'. There's no better name for branding a sister range while recognising, at the same time, the colossal contribution that the Piëch branch of the family has made to the Porsche legend.
One thing's for sure: it would certainly please the chairman of Volkswagen's supervisory board-and that's not a bad idea.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porsche's Tinkertoy PEP
In the mid-1980s Porsche's inquisitive engineers built a radical test bed for the exploration of completely new drive and suspension configurations. It had magazine editors scratching their heads with curiosity.
A few issues ago I said that Porsche should be building and showing some concept cars to establish a new direction for its design and engineering. Since then Audi has blown Porsche away with its brilliant concepts at the winter's auto shows, posing an even more direct challenge to its sister company in Stuttgart.
I said then that the poor reception given the Panamericana concept of 1989 may well have discouraged Porsche from putting its ideas for future models in front of the public. In so saying I short-changed the Boxster concept of 1993, which turned out to be a starting point for a new kind of Porsche. Now in 2010 we've had the 918-a concept car, to be sure, but a disappointing mish-mash of old design ideas instead of the fundamentally fresh approach that we desperately need.
Three years before the Panamericana, another concept Porsche took to the road. It wasn't publicly revealed, however. Instead the matte-black coupe was hammered around the test tracks of Weissach, occasionally snapped by an opportunistic photographer. What could it be? editors speculated. Was it a completely new model? A possible 911 replacement? It looked the part with its plunging nose and big tail-mounted wing.
In 1987 Porsche came clean. Built by the Weissach engineers as Project 2696, the car was their new tool for exploring advanced concepts of handling and suspension. 'It's ugly as sin,' said Peter Schutz, Porsche chief at the time. 'It looks like a camel or something, instead of a horse, because we pay very little attention to its appearance.' This was the Type 2696, also known as the PEP - standing for Porsche Experimental Prototype.
'It's a rolling test stand,' explained Schutz. 'It is a car with which we can do some preliminary feasibility evaluations of concepts. It gives us the opportunity to evaluate different drive systems, because it is literally a Tinkertoy.' This was a reference to a kids' construction set invented in Chicago in 1914. I well remember making interesting structures of various kinds with my Tinkertoy sticks and circular hubs.
'The idea was to create an adjustable car,' said engineer Helmut Flegl, whose research department built the PEP. 'At one stage it looked like a 944 with a different rear end and sounded like a 911.' Its core was an aluminium monocoque center section, which extended from the front toeboard back to the area behind the two seats. In the rear of the monocoque were a 5.3-gallon rubber fuel cell - it wasn't expected to go far from Weissach - and a 3.2-gallon oil reservoir.
Fronting the greenhouse was a 944 windshield. The 944 also provided the roof and B-pillar. Doors were adapted from the 944 but fabricated in glass-fiber, which was used for the entire exterior skin. The steering column with its attached instruments was borrowed from a 928.
Bolted at front and rear to the PEP's central monocoque were welded-steel tubular structures. Carried by these were the suspension systems that Porsche wanted to try out with the PEP. The attachments were made in such a way that the torsional stiffness of the complete vehicle could be varied to try the effects of different structures on handling behaviour.
Suspension at the rear was laid out as trailing arms which were sprung by high-mounted coils. High coils were used at the front as well, acting against the upper arms of a parallel-wishbone setup. This gave the design freedom that was needed to allow all four wheels to be driven. The tubular structures also gave the flexibility needed to try completely different suspensions.
Changes in the PEP's weight distribution and polar moment of inertia could be tried by bolting weights to the tubular frames. 'You could make changes fast,' said Volker Berkefeld, who worked with the PEP, 'and move masses around very well.' Wheelbase length could be changed as well. To accommodate this the drive shaft from rear to front, and its surrounding tube, were telescopic.
The PEP's basic drive train powered all four wheels with its 911 engine mounted in the rear. To reduce mass overhang at the rear, however, the flat six was mounted above the transaxle, driving it through a train of gears. The drive train was laid out so that the PEP could be front-driven, or rear-driven, or four-wheel-drive with different front/rear torque balances. The purpose of the wing at the rear of its snub-nosed bodywork was to permit the car's aerodynamics to be balanced to resemble that of production models.
Porsche made bold claims for its Type 2696. 'In the future it will no longer be necessary to build costly prototypes or heavily modified production cars in the concept phase of a newly-developed vehicle,' it stated. 'In advance its handling can already be evaluated and optimised with the Porsche Experimental Prototype.'
The reality was less rosy. 'It was too crude,' said Flegl. 'It felt very much like a prototype. You couldn't get the feeling of a real car. To decide whether a concept was good or not was impossible.' Volker Berkefeld seconded this negative assessment of the PEP. 'Its acoustics, vibration and so forth made it not representative of a real car. The idea was good, but it's better to build the components into an actual car. The driving feeling is then much better.
'When you try to present a new idea internally,' added Berkefeld, 'it's best to present it in a very good form - not too noisy, for example. Otherwise people don't like it!' He added that later developments leapfrogged the PEP idea in any case: 'Basic suspension issues can now be resolved with computers.' Engineering chief Horst Marchart confirmed this: 'We have become more scientific in the way we work. Maybe this is not always as exciting as it used to be, but the final result is really impressive.'
I can't help thinking as well that the high position of the engine may have skewed some of the research findings. This was less than ideal, raising the car's centre of gravity and placing a substantial mass high at the rear. It was, in retrospect, an odd way to build a test car that was intended to show the best way forward.
Interestingly the Porsche initiative wasn't all that different from the Grand Prix Lotus that Colin Chapman created for the 1976 season. His Type 77 had the following features, said Chapman:
'We can alter the front track very easily by moving the whole of the suspension system out on the very simple sub-frame. It is also very easy to change the rear track. In fact, this is achieved simply by swapping over the rear wheels, which varies the track by four inches.
'We can alter the wheelbase by up to ten inches,' Chapman continued, 'because there are five inches of adjustment at both the front and the rear, and so we can have either a long- or a short-wheelbase car. At the same time, depending upon how it is set up, it is possible to change the location of the centre of gravity, a fairly major adjustment which normally cannot easily be effected once any particular design of racing car exists.
'The basic concept of the Lotus 77,' concluded Colin Chapman, 'apart from trying to produce a light, strong and efficient racing car, is to attempt to effect quite large geometry changes very easily. This is not to say that we will go to a circuit and immediately start altering the car, although that could be done quickly. The idea is that if we are going to a circuit where we know that a long-wheelbase car would probably perform best, we will set it up in the workshop as a long-wheelbase car. If we felt that a wide track would be beneficial for a particular circuit, then we will set up the car in that form. Then, if we found we were mistaken, we could very easily and very quickly change it.'
Chapman first fielded his 77 on the wildly sinuous Interlagos track in Brazil. To suit it the team's 77s were built to minimum dimensions of both track and wheelbase. Mario Andretti found that his 'handles like a go-kart. I just can't get any precision with it.' Ignominiously the Lotus team-mates crashed into each other early in the race, Ronnie Peterson leaving the team thereafter. Andretti persevered to win the season's wet final race in Japan driving a much-improved 77. In fact the 77 was the car that served as a test bed for the 78, which introduced ground-effect downforce to Formula 1 racing.
I don't know whether the PEP has survived. When I updated my Porsche history I was allowed access to the vast underground warehouse off a back street in a Stuttgart industrial estate that housed the Museum's overflow. I saw lots there that was interesting, including the flat-16 engines built for Can-Am racing and the prototypes of the Type 989 four-door Porsche. But I didn't clock the PEP. Exiguous as it was, it may well have gone directly to scrap. Just like my Tinkertoys.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Why Porsche?
After World War 2 the raw material for the first Porsches, the carcasses of wrecked and worn-out VW Jeeps, was scattered across a defeated Germany. Why was Porsche the only outfit to use these as a starting point for a successful business?
It might seem that in the years after World War 2 Porsche KG was the only company that started building sporting cars on the basis of the Volkswagen. It certainly became the most successful. But Porsche wasn't the only contender. As the 1940s turned into the 1950s, Porsche was just one among many firms and individuals who sought to exploit the performance potential of the rugged and ubiquitous Beetle. What set Porsche apart from the rest? Why did no one else succeed in launching a serious VW-based sports car?
Obviously Volkswagen itself was in pole position. Struggling back to life after its bombing during the war, the huge factory at Fallersleben was operating under the jurisdiction of British occupation forces. From October 1945 it built the first post-war Type 11 models, proper Volkswagens after the original Type 60 design. At the Hanover Trade Fair in 1947 the VW was launched on the German market and offered for export as well.
Among the Britons involved with the factory was Michael McEvoy, who before the war had been a tuner of motorcycles and marketer of superchargers. 'Why not make a sports VW?' he said to Major Ivan Hirst, who was in charge of the small British team at the factory. 'Just turn the engine around, put it ahead of the rear wheels and make up a tubular frame.' Though some German car enthusiasts were doing just that, Hirst realised that he'd better concentrate on Beetle-building.
Still, McEvoy's suggestion gave Hirst an idea. Earlier, in the plant's little experimental department supervised by experienced former Porsche man Rudolf Ringel, a cabriolet version of the standard Beetle had been built. Hirst suggested to Ringel that he make a two-seater convertible. This used a modified front bonnet panel as its rear deck lid, louvered to admit cooling air. Equipped with a more lively twin-carburettor engine, this was a sporty as well as pretty Beetle variant.
This one-off car served as a prototype for a two-seater VW cabriolet produced by Josef Hebmüller and Son at Wülfrath in the Ruhr district. Hebmüller completed three prototypes by the end of 1948. The handsome new VW model was launched as the Type 14A at the Geneva Salon in March 1949. Although Volkswagen asked for two thousand, problems at Hebmüller, including a fire, meant that only 696 were made.
Other coachbuilders were converting dumpy Volkswagens into racy roadsters and coupes. Among the leading practitioners of this art were Wuppertal's Drews and Berlin's Rometsch, both of whom produced envelope-bodied two-seaters on the VW platform. Made in both coupe and roadster formats, these were appealingly sporty. Rometsch in particular succeeded with some attractive Italianate designs.
Also building on the Beetle basis was Stuttgart's Dannenhauer & Stauss. Theirs were handsome 2+2 versions, coupes and cabrios, with enveloping front wings and free-standing rear wings. Looking very Porsche-like from the front, some 135 of these were made between 1951 and 1953. Lurking in any of these coachbuilding ventures could have been the seed of an auto-making enterprise like Porsche.
The versatile VW suspension, drive train and platform were welcome raw material for racing enthusiasts as well. The durable flat-four could easily be sized to suit the popular 1,100 cc class. Among those building and racing successful VW-based sports cars were Gottfried Vollmer, who preferred light cycle-winged bodywork, Richard Trenkel, Kurt Delfosse and Kurt Kuhnke, who enclosed the wheels and fitted a canopy to create an aerodynamic racer.
In August of 1947 both Kuhnke's silver car and the first effort of Petermax Müller appeared at races at Hamburg and Brunswick. Based at the time in the latter city, Müller had good contacts at the nearby Volkswagen factory. There, recalled sometime Müller driver Huschke von Hanstein, 'the engineers had hardly anything to do because they were only building the standard Beetle for the British. They were happy to be able to work on our engines in exchange for a sack of potatoes or beets or a kilo of butter.'
Petermax Müller, son of the owner of a Potsdam boatyard, was 35 in 1947. Having rallied for DKW before the war, he had good connections with former Auto Union racing director Karl Feuereissen, who was now VW's sales manager. Several of Müller's first racing cars were based on the chassis of wartime VWs, fitted with open coachwork whose sweeping lines were reminiscent of the aerodynamic Wanderers on which Müller had worked in 1938-39.
Müller's speed secret for his creations was possession of several sets of special cylinder heads that Porsche had developed during the war to power light attack boats. They replaced the VW's adenoidal inlet passages with inclined valves and hemispherical combustion chambers. Known publicly as 'Vogelsang heads' after the VW engineer who helped Müller prepare his cars and engines, these made Petermax Müller the German 1,100 cc-class champion in 1948 and '49. He built six such cars, selling them for 20,000 marks apiece.
The most professional VW-inspired racing effort was the series of sports-racers built by Frankfurt's Walter Glöckler. Before the war his family dealership sold Hanomag cars which Glöckler raced and rallied successfully, partnered in one 1936 event by Huschke von Hanstein. After the war Walter took up VW, the brisk sales of which allowed him to indulge his urge to build and race cars of his own. The man he chose to design them was the head of his workshops, Hermann Ramelow. Tall, bespectacled and professorial, Ramelow had worked on the pre-war aerodynamic Adler sports-racing cars.
Keeping the VW suspension, Ramelow replaced the platform with a ladder-type steel tubular frame that was underslung at the rear. Power came from one of the new 1.1-litre Porsche engines, mounted amidships. The driver's seat was nearly in the centre of the stubby yet handsome aluminium body built by C. H. Weidenhausen of Frankfurt, a three-man outfit that was virtually across the street from the Glöckler dealership.
Walter Glöckler drove his 980-pound special to the 1,100 cc sports-car class championship in Germany in 1950, defeating for the first time the VW-based cars of Petermax Müller. Made with awesome attention to detail, it kept winning for other drivers into 1952. A 1.5-litre Porsche four powered a 1951 Glöckler and three more specials made into 1953. With Porsche now making its own motor-sporting forays, however, Walter Glöckler decided to join them, racing the Stuttgart company's cars instead of trying to beat them.
Close kin to the early Porsches, like them making full use of Volkswagen parts, were the sports cars from the Vienna workshop of Wolfgang Denzel. A former racing motorcyclist, Denzel broke into car competitions with a BMW 328 before World War 2. After the Russians raged through Austria on their way west to wipe up the Nazis, raw material in the form of wrecked military Volkswagens was readily available. Denzel and his colleague Hubert Stroinigg decided to whip it into the shape of a sports car.
The first Denzel sports car - also known as a WD for the builder's initials - took shape in 1948. Soon more Denzels followed as onlookers saw what light and handy sports cars the Viennese were fielding. To get more power from his VW engines Denzel made new cylinder heads with individual inlet ports, selling them as kits offering more displacement and a special crankshaft. He and Stroinigg kept the VW engines in their customary location at the extreme rear, developing a tube-reinforced box-section frame to replace the VW platform.
Envelope-bodied, the Denzels were smooth, low sports cars whose early cockpits were designed to seat three abreast. That it was more than a soap-cake-shaped sportster was shown by the 1954 Alpine Rally, which Denzel and Stroinigg won outright with an engine of only 1.3 litres. Though Wolfgang Denzel earned much more with his BMW distributorship, he kept building his sports cars until 1960. While some accounts claim as many as 350 were made, Denzel historian Jim Perrin suggests a total of less than 100.
What made Porsche different? Why did it succeed when these promising projects stalled at low three-figure totals? There were several reasons. One reason was that the VW, an alien and primitive contraption in the minds of many auto engineers, was entirely normal and logical to the Porsche men, an obvious starting point for further development.
Another reason - and a compelling one - was that the Porsche engineers knew the VW through and through. They knew what it could and couldn't do. They knew why every casting was shaped the way it was and why every part was machined just so. Porsche's engineers and, naturally, Ferry Porsche himself had already solved most of the VW problems that other developers were only now encountering for the first time.
The Porsche organisation had a head start of two decades of familiarity with the raw material. That, plus a passion for sports cars and racing, powered Porsche ahead of all its rivals.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Setright Versus Porsche
Slurs on the reputation of Ferdinand Porsche litter the pages of a serious work on the evolution and impact of the automobile. We try to understand what the author asserted in relation to what Porsche did and why he held such views.
Leonard John Kensell Setright was one of the most exotic, mysterious and ostentatiously erudite individuals to have written about cars and motoring. Born in 1931 and deceased in 2005, L. J. K. Setright - as he was known in print - threw over a seven-year career in law to become a journalist and author. In Britain he was synonymous for 30 years with Car, whose readers he polarised with his eccentric and hortatory observations, richly interlaced with obscure vocabulary and classical allusions.
Published in 2002, a Setright work that turned out to be valedictory was Drive On! - A Social History of the Motor Car. While it may not have been 'quite simply the most stimulating, informative, provocative and witty book on the motor car ever written,' as its publishers claimed, it came close, eclectically spanning the whole history of the automobile, its roads, makers, users and racers.
With Setright a taste that I may never fully acquire, Drive On! was still on my reading list when I heard from Gary Anderson, editor of The Star, the magazine of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America. Reading the book over the holidays, Gary was struck by the author's contempt for Ferdinand Porsche. 'Setright really doesn't have much use for "Dr." Porsche, does he?' wrote Gary, adding, 'Title in quotes, since Setright points out that Porsche didn't even have a college degree, much less the right to the title of Doctor.'
It was time to open the pages of Drive On! On page 69 Ferdinand Porsche steps onto its stage as the 'somewhat impure engineering partner' of Adolf Rosenberger, in the context of the latter's departure from Germany when persecution of Jews intensified. Setright asserts that it was Rosenberger 'who persuaded Porsche of the virtues of rear engines and all-round independent suspension, which suited Porsche's torsion-bar patents very nicely.' Setright goes on to say that these features were used in both the Grand Prix Auto Union and Volkswagen, leaving the clear impression that Porsche only stumbled on them thanks to Rosenberger's advice.
Without the financial backing of Adolf Rosenberger, Porsche would have had great difficulty in setting up his Stuttgart engineering office at the end of the depression year of 1930. Though motor enthusiast and racer Rosenberger held a 15 per cent share in the company, it's misleading to describe him as an 'engineering partner' of Porsche. It is certain, however, that Rosenberger's enthusiasm for the mid-engined Benz racing cars of 1923 - which he had later raced - helped confirm the decision of Porsche and his chief engineer Karl Rabe to recommend a radical mid-placed engine for the Auto Union.
As for suspension, the Benz had independent swing axles only at the rear and a solid front axle - hardly a model worth emulating a decade later. One of the new Porsche office's first projects was its Type 12, a small-car prototype for Zündapp that had all-independent suspension using leaf springs, not torsion bars. Leafs were also used for the rear springing of the first Auto Unions of 1934, torsion bars only coming in the following year.
Speaking of Auto Union, Setright goes out of his way to state that 'the true instigator of the rear-engined revolution in racing cars was not the 1934 Auto-Union [sic] or even the 1924 [sic] Benz,' giving the credit instead to Cooper. In this there is huge merit of course. But the mid-engined movement accelerated by Porsche did lead to experiments with a similar racing car by Alfa Romeo. Designs for mid-engined G. P. cars by Maserati, Sacha Gordine, Connaught and Cisitalia fell short of realisation in Europe's difficult post-war economic climate. And racing-car designers are, oddly enough, notoriously conservative.
Suspension design was an issue in the 1930s. Knowledge of the effects of geometry on tyre and car behaviour was still in its infancy. While Porsche and his team had mastered suspension mechanics, they were less secure on dynamics. Here Setright was at his most withering, saying that 'nobody knew why Porsche's suspension arrangements were so treacherous - least of all Porsche himself.' Not that others were all the wiser in the 1930s.
Leonard Setright couldn't praise enough the creativity of Czech engineer Hans Ledwinka in his designs for Tatra, calling him 'brilliant'. 'On the rough and steeply cambered roads of the Tatra and other middle-European mountains,' said Setright, Ledwinka's early use of swing axles 'worked surprisingly well. Where there was more grip, they were dastardly.' This was not unfair, though many designers, Porsche included, learned how to tame swing axles.
Porsche, added Setright, simply swiped Ledwinka's ideas - and wrongly. 'As often happens in cases of conceptual larceny,' he wrote, Porsche 'corrupted the ideas he stole from Ledwinka; but such was the confidence reposed in him that everyone was sure that his KdF Volkswagen and Auto-Union [sic] P-Wagen must be all right, however much their antics were all wrong.'
As someone who grew up with the VW Beetle, I don't recall that its 'antics' were all that outrageous. And the Auto Unions muscled up pretty well against the might of Mercedes-Benz, with Bernd Rosemeyer the European Champion in 1936 and Herman-Paul Müller 1939's top man under the existing points system. To be sure, the 1938-39 Auto Unions had De Dion rear suspension of a non-Porsche design, but their basic layout was the same.
As for the pioneering rear-engined role of Hans Ledwinka, this is highly over-rated. Ledwinka made great contributions in the industry's early years, including an overhead-cam engine for the Model S Nesselsdorf of 1906 that certainly inspired Porsche's design of an Austro Daimler racing engine of 1910. But Tatra's rear-engined thrust of the 1930s was the work of a new generation: Ledwinka's son Erich, who came straight from graduation in 1930, and Vienna-born Erich Übelacker, who joined Tatra in 1927 at the age of 28. They designed a small 1931 prototype and the bigger rear-engined Tatras, the Type 77 and 87, that would be among the most radical large cars ever made.
The Ledwinkas and Übelacker had been keeping the patent offices busy as well. They were ultimately credited with more than one thousand patents that gave Tatra priority over Porsche's Volkswagen design in several areas, including engine position, the layout of the gearbox and the ducted-fan cooling. When the VW was being designed, the Porsche engineers were told by Berlin that they shouldn't worry about patents. They should just press on with the design and those details would all be sorted out later on.
In fact they were sorted out later on at the initiative of the heirs of the von Ringhoffer family that owned Tatra before and during the war. They brought suit against Volkswagen AG, which in the meantime had regularised its relationship with the Porsche design office and its own panoply of patents. Testimony in the Ringhoffers' favour was given by an Austrian garage proprietor who scrutinised an early Beetle prototype when its body panels were changed in his workshop.
Before a trial verdict was reached the parties settled out of court. Ringhoffer-Tatra received three million marks from Volkswagen in compensation for the use of its patented features in the Beetle. Setright wrote that 'The fact that [the VW's] designer, the greatly overrated Ferdinand Porsche, had "borrowed" most of its concepts from the much cleverer Tatra designer Hans Ledwinka of Czechoslovakia was just another inconvenient fact to be suppressed,' presumably by the Nazi regime.
In fact, neither the verdict nor the history carried an implication that Porsche copied those features. Rather he adopted them logically as part of the hasty evolution in parallel of another rear-engined air-cooled automobile.
Setright grudgingly tossed a small bone to Ferdinand Porsche in his discussion of methods of power transmission. He mentioned the electric drive system that Porsche developed for cars built by Lohner in Vienna, cars powered by batteries or by engines and generators. 'Porsche cashed in on it eventually,' Setright admitted, 'in the Great War of 1914-1918, when the suitability of his so-called Mixte transmission for army gun-carriages and the like made him successful enough to be clever.'
I submit that in fact he was clever enough to be successful in tasks that seemed impossible, such as transporting 90 tons of 380 mm howitzer to high mountain passes to fight in the Italian Alps. One of his military road trains was brilliantly engineered to reverse in its own wheeltracks even if their path was sinuous.
Auto-industry figures associated with Germany come out poorly in Leonard Setright's book. Few are given a mention and even fewer a positive assessment. Those with any Third Reich association are beyond his pale. The conclusion is unavoidable that the author's open and sincere devotion to his Jewish faith influenced his views about the men and institutions that were part and parcel of the appalling atrocities committed under Adolf Hitler. Among these, for better or worse, Ferdinand Porsche was one of the tall poppies.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Celebrating the Rennmezger
Behind the successes of both road and racing Porsches from the 1960s through the 1980s was Hans Mezger, a modest engineer who, however, had very little to be modest about.
It's obvious why I have a soft spot for Hans Mezger. He was one of the few at Porsche-along with Ferdinand Piëch-who wrote to publisher L. Scott Bailey about my book Porsche-Excellence Was Expected after it was launched in 1978. His letter included the following:
'I think I do not have to thank you and Karl just for the book but even more for the excellent work you have done. "Excellence was expected," also from you. This comprehensive book will be an important and helpful document. Karl's book is an appreciation for me and my colleagues at Porsche, who designed and built race cars for many years.'
When Hans Mezger wrote these lines one of his most impressive achievements for Porsche lay in the future. He was the planner and chief designer of the engine that McLaren used to score three straight drivers' championships from 1984 through 1986, one for Niki Lauda and two for Alain Prost, and two constructors' championships on the trot in 1984 and '85. With Mezger's turbo V6 sponsored by middle-eastern technology company TAG, McLaren's drivers scored seven poles, 18 fastest laps and 25 victories in 68 starts.
Although generally known as an engine man at Porsche, from 1965 Mezger-pronounced 'Mets-ger'-was in overall charge of racing-car design. That year a separate department for racing vehicle engineering, Konstruktion Rennfahrzeuge, was set up with Hans Mezger as its chief. He had overall responsibility for the eight-cylinder 908 and then the formidable flat-12 917, which between them won the sports-car world championships of 1969 through 1971.
Returning to his engine specialty, Mezger authored Porsche's project 2623, better known as the TAG-P01 turbo, that won the championships mentioned above in McLaren's Grand Prix cars. Later in the 1980s he designed the turbo V-8 for Porsche's foray into CART racing. Regrettably this was aborted before it had a chance to give of its best. Finally for the Footwork Arrows team of 1991 Mezger led the design of the Type 3512 Porsche V-12 that turned out to be his least satisfying effort. Hans Mezger retired from Porsche in 1994.
Born as he was on 18 November 2009, Hans Mezger celebrated turning 80 late last year. He first saw the world in the hamlet of Besigheim on Stuttgart's northern perimeter. After graduating from the Stuttgart Technical Institute, Mezger joined Porsche in October of 1956. His first post was in the calculation section of the design office, where he was responsible for camshaft design. A slender man of medium height with bold features and a deep voice, Hans Mezger was an engineer in whom his colleagues instinctively felt they could place their confidence.
Easily the most interesting of the engines that Mezger found at Porsche was the four-cam four-cylinder Type 547 that Ernst Fuhrmann designed for the racing Spyders. Enlarged for the Carrera 2s and Abarth-Carreras, the four bore the Type 587/2 designation. When the call went out for more power and improved durability to meet tougher competition in 1964, Hans Mezger stepped up to the challenge. He was then spending 30 per cent of his time in the drawing office and 70 per cent in the experimental department, where as the 'Rennmezger' he was recognised for his knack for making engines stronger quicker.
Porsche's staple pushrod fours also enjoyed the Mezger touch. He oversaw their improvement for the new 356C range introduced in 1963. His assignment was to rationalise the engine's design for more efficient manufacturing and to extract from the former Super 90 the 90 or more horsepower that it was supposed to have had.
'Whenever more power had been needed before,' Hans Mezger said, 'the inlet valves had always been made larger, but not the exhaust valves. In consequence they had become much too small.' He took the surprising step of reducing inlet-valve diameter from 40 to 38 mm so that the exhaust valve could be made larger, 34 instead of 31 mm. At the same time Mezger reshaped the inlet and exhaust ports, improving gas flow by making their cross-sectional areas more nearly constant. The result was the best-ever engine family for the 356.
While doing these jobs Hans Mezger was winding up his work on Porsche's Type 753 1½-litre flat eight for Formula 1, which was raced in 1962. Although Porsche credits him with the design of this complex four-cam eight, in fact he was the developer of an engine whose original layout was the work of Hans Hönick, who had worked in engine design with the departed Ernst Fuhrmann.
So elaborate was the eight that its assembly demanded 220 skilled man-hours, an almost unbelievable 27½ eight-hour days-which of course do not exist in the world of racing. For comparison it took no more than two such man-days to assemble a six-cylinder Carrera engine. Mezger made the best of it, during 1962 authoring several major changes of valve angles and combustion chambers that would have shown to advantage had Porsche not cancelled its Formula 1 effort after the 1962 season.
For Monza in 1962 Porsche's Formula 1 engines had a trick the engineers had been eager to try. They installed an electromagnetic clutch in the drive to the cooling fan that could disable it at the touch of a switch. They found that it was safe to cut it out of operation for eight to ten seconds without hazarding the engine's health. But, Mezger admitted, 'one hardly felt the eight horsepower or so that were saved.' Mezger even dyno-tested a more advanced version that used a thermostat to reengage the fan automatically when engine temperature rose above a certain level.
From the raw material of the Grand Prix Type 753 Hans Mezger fashioned the 2.0-litre Type 771 which continued in sports-car racing after 1962 and which, in 2.2-litre form, enjoyed important successes in the 907 chassis as late as 1968. Though it was a potent weapon in Porsche's sports-car arsenal the eight was pure hell to work on. It was as hard to adjust the valve timing on the early eight, said Mezger, as it was to do the same job on the twelve-cylinder 917.
Hans Mezger was also drawn into the design of a new engine to suit the successor to the 356. The first effort to crack this problem produced ungainly flat sixes with vee-inclined overhead valves operated by pushrods from two camshafts, one above and one below the crankshaft. Though these produced the desired 130 bhp in 2.2-litre form they had limited potential for development and no usefulness for racing.
By 1963 the planned flat six for the 901 was transformed completely. It now had chain-driven overhead camshafts operating the valves through rocker arms. What provoked this change? Hans Mezger put it succinctly and with a smile: 'We decided that if we were going to all the trouble of having two camshafts we might as well put them in the heads!' Mezger had much to do with the design of the final 901/911 six, working with the engineer responsible for its development, Ferdinand Piëch in his first major engineering project at Zuffenhausen.
The setting up of a separate department for Konstruktion Rennfahrzeuge, headed by Mezger, in 1965 was the result of the realisation that past experience wasn't being used to advantage. The turnover of projects in the Porsche drawing office was so rapid that new men were often put on racing jobs who had no inkling of how such efforts had been tackled and resolved in the past.
'Everybody started afresh each time,' said Hans Mezger. 'The guy who worked on the last job two years ago had left or was assigned to another project.' This pattern was especially clear during turbulent personnel changeovers in the early 1960s. It was time for a change. 'We felt it was better for racing projects to have the same people do the work all the time,' Mezger recalled. It was a tribute to his skills that he was named to head this new effort.
Well able to frame and articulate his design ideas, Hans Mezger was often deputed to explain them to the members of the Society of Automotive Engineers. In one such presentation he explained the approach to engineering that he shared with Porsche's technical chief, Helmuth Bott. 'We know what we can take over from earlier designs,' he said, 'and we also know what we do not want to take over. One thing is evident: the more experience, the smaller the risk in a new development, and the quicker-and thus also the cheaper-the development process. Porsche likes development work, and its participation in racing is one among several reasons for this.'
When Porsche fires up its old racers, Hans Mezger is seldom far away. Any questions arising can always be answered by the Rennmezger. He, after all, had been there and done that.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Karmann Contributions
For many decades a staunch servant of Germany's car industry, Wilhelm Karmann GmbH struggled in 2009. Could Volkswagen bring it back into Porsche's orbit?
I always enjoyed meeting Wilhelm Karmann at the Frankfurt Show. A slender gentleman with a broad smile and impeccable style, he was born in 1914, only son and namesake of the founder of Wilhelm Karmann GmbH. The elder Karmann started as a coachbuilder in 1901, when he took over the established business of Christian Klages in Osnabrück from the widow Klages. Soon enough Karmann was producing bodywork for the budding auto industry.
The warm contacts of Karmann, Junior with us at Ford of Europe soon paid off. In 1983 he started making the Escort Convertible and the following year he began producing the Merkur version of our Sierra for the US market. In parallel, of course, Karmann was building the Scirocco and then Corrado for Volkswagen, its neighbour in Lower Saxony, much as it had previously produced the Karmann-Ghia and, from 1949, the Cabrio version of the Beetle-its first major volume-production contract.
And building not only bodies but also complete cars for Porsche.
Early in 1961 Karmann's work for Porsche began with a new body style for the 356B, the Hardtop-Coupe. This was a distinctive design, a closed car whose style was patterned after the detachable Hardtop version. Karmann rose to a production rate of 15 bodies a day of this model-known internally as the Hardtop 61-which were shipped to Zuffenhausen for assembly into complete cars. Though some see this as an 'ugly duckling' of the 356 series, I think this is a bit harsh. In all 1,746 of these coupes were produced.
In 1962 Karmann gave up the short-lived Hardtop-Coupe to make normal coupes, which it continued to do through the life of the 356 model. In fact its role became critical during preparations for the launch of the 911. The latter's body was to be built by Reutter, whose coachworks were taken over by Porsche in 1963. Reutter could concentrate on this important launch because production bodies for the 356C were supplied by Karmann.
Soon enough Karmann was making 911 bodies as well, this time to help ramp up the new model's production. 'We have been trying to find a way of getting more bodies,' Huschke von Hanstein said at the time. 'Bodies are our main bottleneck.' This was especially the case because Porsche wanted to make both the 911 and the four-cylinder 912.
Porsche contracted with Karmann to assemble and trim complete 911-type coupe bodies. Though Karmann's prices were never the lowest in Europe for small volumes, it was the only contract producer that offered the quality that Porsche required. While Porsche expanded its in-house body capacity at the end of the 1960s, it still needed Karmann's help.
Zuffenhausen's tooling for its new higher production of 50 bodies a day was set up for half and half coupes and Targas. The demand for coupes, still greater than that for the Targa, was satisfied by additional 911 bodies obtained from Karmann-from 20 to 25 daily. This manufacture of 911/912 bodies continued at Osnabrück until 1971. According to Karmann the total made for both the 356 and 911 came to 'near enough' 50,000.
Meanwhile Osnabrück was producing the Type 2 Karmann-Ghia in VW's lineup, a car that didn't enjoy the acceptance of its predecessor. It was phased out in 1969 with few regrets to make room for a completely new model, the VW-Porsche 914. Developed in a complex joint venture between VW and Porsche, the mid-engined 914 was produced under a contract between VW and Karmann to which Porsche had no access. In discussions of the specifics of the 914's price and production, the Porsche men found themselves at a disadvantage.
Under the final plan, the four-cylinder 914 was completely fabricated, assembled, trimmed and put on wheels, ready to go, by Karmann at Osnabrück. The six-cylinder version was made differently. Its body was put together, trimmed and painted by Karmann and then put on one of the big articulated nine-unit carriers that were being used to bring 911 bodies to Zuffenhausen. There the 914 body was fed into the same line at Porsche on which the 911s were assembled. Thus the 914/6 was given the same care and attention at the Zuffenhausen plant that all other Porsches received.
In this there was nothing disadvantageous to Porsche. It was essentially what the company had had in mind from the beginning of the 914 adventure. But the financial arrangements were something else again. Volkswagen, as proprietor of the 914 project, required Karmann to charge Porsche more for the 914/6 body than it did for the more intricate and elaborate 911 bodies it was already supplying! And Porsche was committed, by the very nature of the project, to sell the 914/6 sell for significantly less than the 911! The profit outlook was poor.
Why did VW do this? 'They calculate costs differently in a big firm,' reflected Ferry Porsche later. 'They don't consider the other advantages of having a sports car in the line, the way it can attract people into the showroom.' VW plotted the very small volume of the 914/6 against the cost of tooling it and came up with a high per-unit cost to repay its investment in a short time. VW didn't amortise the cost of the 914/6 body over the whole 914 range as Porsche would have done. The relatively short life of the 914, through 1975, saw Karmann produce 118,947 of the model according to its figures.
It took a while for Porsche and Karmann to get together again. The 914's successor as a joint project with VW, the 924, was produced a the former NSU factory at Neckarsulm, north of Stuttgart. When sales of the front-engined four-cylinder models declined at the end of the 1980s, they wee moved from Neckarsulm to Zuffenhausen, where they shared an assembly line with the 928. The decision to effect the change was made in May 1989 by the management board, then chaired by Heinz Branitzki. Their reasoning was simple enough engineer Paul Hensler recalled: 'We felt if we built it here it would be cheaper.'
Manufacture of the bodies was contracted to Wilhelm Karmann. They were made as bodies in white at Karmann's sister factory at Rheine, in the north near the Dutch border, with painting taking place in Zuffenhausen. Bodies began to be made at Rheine from March 1991. Although the first cars assembled at Stuttgart were 944S2s, built as a training exercise for the workforce, both companies soon transitioned to the 968. In all Karmann made 11,803 bodies up to the run-out of the 968. That brought to some 182,500 the total of cars and bodies made by Karmann for Porsche.
Karmann made an important contribution to the new Porsche family of the mid-1990s, the 986 Boxster and the 996 911 Carrera. It produced the dies with which BMW stamped the zinc-protected steel panels of both models. But as a production site Karmann failed to make its bones with the tough new Porsche regime run by former production head Wendelin Wiedeking. When he and his aides went looking for supplementary production to meet high demand for the Boxster, they ended up in Finland instead of Osnabrück or Rheine.
At that time Karmann wasn't complaining. It was making the popular SLK for Mercedes-Benz. As well the company was diversifying as a specialist in convertible tops, both soft and hard, and in the provision of technical services. But it was aware in the summer of 2008 that its contract car-assembly business was under threat, because it had failed to land a new contract to replace the SLK, production of which stopped last June. That called a halt to automobile production that has totalled more than 3.3 million units since 1949.
Well aware of the coming risk to its business, the family interests that still control Karmann placed their operating company in receivership on 8 April 2009. Laying off some 2,000 car-production staff, it aimed to say in business with its tooling services, convertible-top supply and other activities. The receiver and the Karmann family, which still owns the buildings and equipment through a company that's not bankrupt, are negotiating with parties who may wish to carry on the business.
The main interested party is Volkswagen, whose Martin Winterkorn told the press that 'we in Lower Saxony are very interested in preserving jobs.' The hot topic in November was that VW, with its new authority over Porsche, may cancel the planned shift of Boxster production from Valmet to Magna Steyr in Austria and direct it instead to Karmann. If the Osnabrück company can return to car assembly on a more efficient basis, that would be a perfect solution. Today's mid-engined Porsche could be built in the same factory that once produced its spiritual predecessor, the evergreen 914.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Electrification of Porsche
Porsche's soon-to-be sister Audi has just the technology that the Zuffenhausen company needs to make a big splash with an electric sports car. But will the VW Group give Porsche access to the elegant innards of Audi's new e-tron?
San Carlos, California's Tesla Motors didn't have to worry too much about initial demand for its electric sports cars. Every major motor-car maker in the world wanted a Tesla, not only to verify its real-world performance and range but also to take a look at the technology invested in the two-seater by Silicon-Valley smarties who aimed to boldly go where mainstream car makers feared to tread.
No car maker felt the Tesla's impact more than Porsche. Here were American engineers, helped by chassis-builders Lotus, who created a sports car that is a credible rival for a Porsche-and it's emission-free! With its maximum speed of only 125 mph the Tesla doesn't challenge any Porsche, but for many markets that's adequate. Acceleration to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds is plenty lusty, however, as is a standing quarter-mile in 12.7 seconds with speed through the traps of 105.3 mph.
To boot, in its latest Version 1.5 the Tesla has a radius of action once thought unattainable by an electric car. Improved from the Version 1.0's 221 miles, it's quoted as 244 miles for the 1.5. Though these figures haven't been independently verified, Tesla has now been in the public eye for so long that it would be imprudent to quote unrealistic ranges. I've seen a Tesla that was driven from Lotus in Norfolk to Nuneaton in the Midlands, a distance of 140 miles, and it still had sparks to spare.
The Tesla was in Nuneaton to be evaluated at MISA, the motor-industry proving ground. I found it amazingly appealing. With full torque available from rest it surged up to speed with uncanny silence and lack of apparent effort. Smooth propulsion by the proverbial 'giant hand' was instantly available at any speed. Totally new in my experience, the sensation is splendidly and immediately seductive. It's power as you would wish it to be delivered-and better than that.
Industrially, of course, at this stage of its development Tesla is no rival for Porsche. Aesthetically and environmentally, however, it's posing quite a challenge. Taste and thought leaders are gravitating toward the Tesla and away from conventional sports cars. The trend is more marked now that Tesla is selling its two-seaters in Europe as well as America. 'Shrewdly controlled,' said auto motor und sport, 'the Tesla whip-cracks forward from any speed as suddenly, smoothly and calmly as if on a bungee cord.' Porsche has already drawn its own conclusions.
Porsche is of course no stranger to electric propulsion. Created in a hectic ten weeks, the first electric car built by Vienna's Lohner to the designs of Ferdinand Porsche was unveiled in February of 1900. It was described then by the Austrian Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung as offering 'epoch-making novelties'. With a specially built racing version, his Type J, Porsche personally set a new record for four-wheelers in the Semmering Hill Climb later in 1900.
Amazingly the 25-year-old Porsche also built a pure racing car in 1900 for an English client to tackle an electric-car competition based in Chislehurst, Kent. It was an awesome machine, a box of batteries carried by four of Porsche's patented wheel motors. With its driver Porsche having caught a fierce cold on the test's first day, however, the entry was disqualified when he arrived late for the second day's start.
Porsche had creativity and energy to spare in 1900. He also equipped one of his battery-powered chassis with two 3½-horsepower de Dion engines. Each drove a generator that delivered a current of 20 amperes at 90 volts. Under way, the generators' output was fed directly to the two front-wheel motors unless it wasn't needed, in which case it was diverted to the batteries. The latter were switched into the circuit to augment the output of the generators when required, for example on upgrades. The generators were operated in reverse as motors to start the engines. It was nothing less than one of the first hybrids.
From 1900 to 1915 Vienna's Lohner built 301 pure electric vehicles to the designs of Ferdinand Porsche, the majority serving as taxis in Vienna. Porsche remained intrigued by the potential of an all-electric transmission, continuing work on a advanced prototype into the 1920s. By then, however, his skills were fully absorbed by the conventional-vehicle demands of Daimler-Benz.
Porsche's next electric-car venture came in belated response to the Energy Crisis years of the 1970s. In 1980-81 its engineers set out their vision of an electric runabout for urban and suburban use. Their Type 2590 accommodated four passengers flanking a high-efficiency sodium-sulphur battery array that was encased inside a backbone that created a wide central 'tunnel'. Coil-sprung at all four corners, the Type 2590 was driven through its front wheels.
Porsche's proposed electric car had a DC motor driving through a two-speed gearbox. Light at 2,530 pounds, it was projected to need half a minute to reach 60 mph and to be limited to a top speed of 80 mph. Modest performance paid off in a very good estimated range for the time of 155 miles. Engineered from scratch as an electric car, the Weissach design was insightful for its era. But it was never realised in the metal.
Apart from its hybrid developments for the Cayenne and Panamera, Porsche has since had little reason to think about electric drives. Even if it were to plunge wholeheartedly into a fully electric vehicle, where would it get the technology? Substantially though Porsche has grown, it lacks the capability in depth to do justice to a completely new form of motive power. But it should find some way to respond to the demands of new markets that value a low-carbon contribution more highly than Autobahn-burning speed.
Fortunately help is at hand. It was displayed on the Audi stand at September's Frankfurt Show in the form of the e-tron, another example of Audi's obsession with lower-case designations. Some aspects of its specification suggest close acquaintance with the Tesla. Most obvious is its use of lithium-ion cells, the choice of most advanced battery-electric projects. Audi will also use them for its future Q5 hybrid sport-utility. Like Tesla it gives the batteries their own cooling system.
A departure from Tesla-but a reminder of Porsche's dedicated racer of 1900-is Audi's drive to all four wheels. At the rear the two electric motors, with their own cooling system, are mounted behind the rear suspension. The front electric motors are mounted at the suspension with their cooling system arranged in front of them. With the batteries placed behind the cockpit, this gives the e-tron a 42%/58% weight distribution. Its control system normally doses the torque to the motors in a similar proportion but can vary torque amongst all four wheels as conditions require.
Using techniques that Audi says it will soon use for its production cars, the e-tron aims to make the most of its electric power source by being as light as possible. Its body structure is based on Audi Space Frame (ASF) aluminium technology with all added-on parts-doors, covers, sidewalls and roof-made of fibre-reinforced plastic. 'The combination of aluminium and carbon fibre-reinforced composite material guarantees supreme rigidity coupled with low weight,' says Audi.
Despite the hefty drive system with four electric motors and a high-capacity battery system, the total weight of the e-tron is around 3,525 pounds. Impressively, this is about the same as a Porsche Turbo. With performance forecast at zero to 60 in 4.7 seconds, acceleration isn't too shabby. Just like the Tesla, top speed of the e-tron is a modest 125 mph. Although both sports cars have no gearbox, using their motors alone for their full speed range, adding gears is entirely feasible.
The e-tron is packed with fascinating features including a heat pump for heating and air conditioning. Braking has innovations as well. Floating-caliper disc brakes at the rear are actuated electrically by a 'brake by wire' system. In addition to eliminating frictional losses due to residual drag when the brakes aren't applied, the system allows the e-tron's electric motors to convert braking energy into electricity and recover it. Only when heavy braking is needed do the discs themselves kick in.
As a package the e-tron is a dead ringer for a Porsche. Compared to a 911 the Audi sports car is shorter, slightly wider and longer in the wheelbase at 102.4 against the 911's 92.5 inches. So the question that follows is: does Audi want to offer a sports car in this category? With its A8 in V8 and V10 versions Audi has already invaded Porsche territory big time. These are phenomenally competent sports cars.
But what will the bigger picture be when the absorption of Porsche into the VW Group is completed? Wouldn't it be good to introduce a zero-emissions Porsche with the e-tron's features? I think it would-but it won't be up to me. Instead it will be up to Michael Macht and his colleagues to make the case for an all-electric Porsche that will draw on the pioneering traditions of more than a century ago.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Concept-Car Contribution
Concept cars like the 'Gruppe B', Panamericana and Boxster have played important roles in the evolution of Porsche's products. It's time for Weissach to produce another one to show the way forward at a crucial time in Porsche history.
Harm Lagaay remembered the Panamericana as 'the love-hate device'. This Porsche concept car of 1989 was intensely controversial. Nominally it was a birthday present for Ferry Porsche, who turned 80 that September. However, said Lagaay's predecessor as head of Porsche design Tony Lapine, 'Ferry really snubbed the Panamericana. "It's grotesque," he said.'
Ferry's wasn't the only negative response inside the company. 'The reaction to the Panamericana created problems for me within Porsche,' admitted the company's new chief engineer, Ulrich Bez. If Bez was hoping to use it to communicate Porsche's heightened emotionality as a marque-which he was-he succeeded, but the emotions he stirred up were as much negative as positive.
Two decades later the Panamericana doesn't look all that outrageous. For then-new design chief Harm Lagaay the aim of the concept was to 'show that Porsche is always ready to set new trends in form, colours and trim.' It was, he added, 'an unique opportunity to present a car that represents everything in which we, as a sports-car maker, take pride.'
Built on a Carrera 4 chassis, the Panamericana took its name from the same Mexican Road Race that had inspired 'Carrera'. Its design was based on a concept sketched by British designer Steve Murkett which showed a dune-buggy-like interpretation of the 911 with exposed wheels and exoskeletal tubing as a roll-over structure.
Murkett's idea was refined into what Lagaay called 'not a roadster, not a Speedster but perhaps a kind of Spyder with visible safety' in the form of a framework above its doors and windscreen that supported an unique folding fabric roof. Combinations of fabric and plastic panels with versatile fixings allowed five different roof conditions from fully closed to fully open.
Produced of glass-fibre in Porsche's shops, the Panamericana's body was most radical in its cutaway wheelhouses, exposing its wheels far more than usual. Here in fact were references to Italian sports-racers of the 1950s, which abbreviated their wings for better brake and tire cooling. Set into the skin of the Panamericana were new interpretations of traditional Porsche grilles and sloped-back headlamps, while Speedline made new three-piece wheels to Porsche's handsome six-spoke design.
New to the Panamericana's interior was a steering wheel adjustable for reach. Four colours were blended in its leather trim, while its exterior was painted a striking metallic 'frog green'. This was just one of the controversial aspects of this concept car, unusually for Porsche emphasising styling over engineering.
Respected Porsche observer Paul Frère was among the many journalists who took strongly against the Panamericana, said Ulrich Bez, who added that 'later he came to say that he had been wrong about that.' A second look at the Panamericana, in the context of its intentions, suggests that it was unfairly maligned. 'It was underrated then,' said Lagaay. 'We showed it a few times after that. We drove it into the city and the crowds that gathered were such that nobody could move!'
'The core of the car was leading to the future,' added Bez. 'If it had wings it looked like the 993.' In fact the Panamericana builders had chosen the more radical side of their clay model because the other side gave away too much of the more voluptuous shape of the forthcoming 993. The concept car gave them a vital spark for a new styling direction for the 993, one of the most important cars in Porsche's history. Much later, of course, it provided the inspiration for the name of the Panamera-quite a different kind of car.
This wasn't Porsche's first 'concept car' in the modern sense. The very first Porsche of 1948, the open mid-engined Roadster, turned out to be a one-off concept that influenced the styling but not the engineering of the 356/2. Subsequently Porsche made many in-house prototypes for assessment but the next out-and-out concept for public display was the opalescent-pearl 'Gruppe B' that appeared at Frankfurt in 1983. This foreshadowed in broad terms the look of the later 959.
Conceived as a racing version of the 911 under the new Group B rules that called for production of 200 cars in 12 months, the 'Gruppe B' showed that Porsche was planning a four-wheel-drive model. Under design director Tony Lapine and studio chief Wolfgang Möbius, Dick Soderberg developed its shape. The car's dramatic style would reflect for years the best of the Porsche look and inspire numerous body kits for the 911. Said colleague Ginger Ostle of Soderberg, 'His whole understanding of form and his ability to design with a pencil had a huge influence on what came out of Porsche.'
Porsche's most recent concept was of course the original Boxster, which made its bow in Detroit in January of 1993 to show that Porsche was serious about introducing a new and less expensive model. The concept Boxster wasn't a true precursor of the production car because it was styled by Grant Larson in parallel with the other studies that were then being conducted into ways to build both a new 911 and a mid-engined roadster while using the same front-end components. But at a time when Porsche was just emerging from its business nadir it was an important sign of new vitality in Zuffenhausen and Weissach.
Perhaps you already know where I'm heading with this. We urgently need to see a new concept Porsche.
The creation of a new Porsche concept car is vital for several reasons:
- After more than 50 years the 911 look and configuration has finally worn out its welcome. Porsche needs a new icon.
- The Panamera shows definitively that Porsche has run out of styling ideas. A new direction is needed.
- We're all worried about what will happen to Porsche in its new relationship to the VW Group. We need the reassurance of a concept that will prove that Porsche will be allowed to assert its own engineering ideas.
Recently when researching the career of renowned car stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro I ran across this comment by him on the design of the 911: 'It all passed right over Porsche's head! All the body shapes, all the sharp corners came and went and the Porsche has survived them all uncontaminated.' He should know, because Giugiaro was the creator of several trends including the 'origami look' of creased metal and the 'peasant look' of Fiat's Panda. (A stylist friend of mine called the latter the 'pre-crashed-car look'.)
It is eminently meritorious that the 911 look-itself derived from the evergreen 356-has survived so long. It shows the care and affection lavished on it by generations of design chiefs and stylists. But it's now time to rethink this core member of the Porsche family. I find it hard to disagree with D. Smith who wrote to our American contemporary Excellence to say that 'Porsche's sports cars all look like warmed-over versions of what was available in 1980. Who wants such an old-fashioned, tired-looking car-one that costs $135,000 and can be outperformed by modern designs costing half as much?'
We need a total overhaul from the tyre patches upward of the car that will propel Porsche forward. What's required is neither a rear engine nor a mid engine but rather an engine centred over the rear wheels, integrated with its transaxle. To see what this would make possible, Weissach should get its mitts on a new Lotus Evora, which has a 2+2 package engineered to modern standards. We still want that capability in this new car, a commodious feature that's been part and parcel of the 911's appeal.
This fresh approach will allow the interior to be tackled. The famous five-gauge package, iconic since 1963, has already been embarrassingly emasculated. Its speedometer is a total waste of valuable space, the digital speed readout the only one worth watching. We expect Porsche to replace this anachronism with a brand-new gauge system that uses the most advanced ergonomic principles to inform the driver without the 'Tokyo by night' garishness of some of its rivals.
Porsche engineering chief Wolfgang Dürheimer is correct when he says that the 911 is 'a perfect car-in its way.' It has been optimised within an inch of its life. Porsche might choose to continued making 911s, much as Morgan carries on with a classic model. But it urgently needs an advanced sports car that will not only take advantage of the latest technologies but also underline its independence from VW and Audi.
We hear unsettling noises from Wolfsburg about component sharing between Porsche and the VW Group's products. This could continue to apply to cars like the Panamera and Cayenne. But just as another VW daughter has introduced a new home-designed product, Bentley's all-Bentley Mulsanne, we need a new all-Porsche sports car that will advance and enhance the inimitable character of the cars from Stuttgart. I look forward to seeing it as a concept car at Frankfurt in 2011.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Bittersweet End Game
The ability of Porsche to remain independent in a world of motor-industry consolidations was always in doubt. With his expansionist policies Wendelin Wiedeking put Porsche in play. The denouement triggered his downfall.
If it hadn't been for Volkswagen, Porsche would never have kept building cars. As described in my August column, producing a few cars in Austria was only a make-work project for the employees stranded in Gmünd by wartime dispersals. After reaching an agreement in 1948 that Porsche would receive five marks per VW produced as compensation for the use of its designs, Volkswagen began its upward surge. From late 1949 Porsche's bank balance in Stuttgart began to show the results.
Albert Prinzing, a schoolmate of Ferry who was in charge of the company's finances, knew that these riches posed certain risks. The Porsches' booming income could be taxed heavily unless they had some offsetting expenses-perhaps even some losses. Prinzing's advice to the Porsches and Piëchs was that they set up some kind of manufacturing operation. 'Something, anything, must be produced here as soon as possible,' he told them.
What might they make in Germany? A light diesel tractor was being developed in which the senior Porsche was especially interested. Available as well were the little sports cars that were just getting into production in Austria early in 1949. Prinzing recommended that Porsche transfer this venture to German soil. The idea encountered resistance in the Porsche and Piëch families. Some members pointed out that so far the car-building venture in Gmünd was anything but a roaring success. They argued that Porsche's renowned engineering skills could be deployed most profitably by sticking strictly to design and development, leaving the risks of manufacturing to others.
Ferry Porsche was amongst those who questioned the value of an increased commitment to car manufacturing. After all, the company was now safely back in harness with Volkswagen, its major customer. Prinzing won him over, however, and Ferry in turn helped persuade others in the family that the idea was sound. The decision to build Porsche cars in Germany was made. During the autumn of 1949 draftsmen ensconced in the garage of the Porsche villa in Stuttgart were hard at work revising the design of the Type 356/2 to adapt it to volume production. A batch of 500 was their first objective.
Subsequently of course the relationship between Porsche and VW remained close. Not until the 1970s was Porsche free to design cars in the VW category for other customers. Both the 914 and 924 were major joint projects for the two companies, the second designed originally as a VW and then taken over by Porsche. Zuffenhausen engineers admitted that they learned a lot about quality control and production from their counterparts at Volkswagen during these projects.
With Ferdinand Piëch heading Audi in the 1980s, connections with Porsche were understandably explored. The new 32-valve version of Porsche's 928 V-8 was seen as an attractive proposition by Ingolstadt. In October of 1982 it seemed that Audi would take ten of these eights a day for a new top-of-the-range model. By December, 1983 the planned rate had increased to 20 per day for a new Audi, the Ω or Omega, whose production was to begin in March of 1986. This was an unique new car whose styling and specification had been developed in co-operation with Porsche. However this ambitious program failed to fly.
Another business link with Ingolstadt was the Audi-Porsche Avant RS2. Based on the quattro version of Audi's 80 Avant station wagon, the RS2 was Porsche-ized throughout with more power and better brakes. Launched at Frankfurt in September, 1993, the model's final assembly and test took place in Zuffenhausen using painted bodies delivered by Audi. With each partner receiving half the profits of a jointly held company, Arge Audi-Porsche, RS2 production started early in 1994 with the first cars delivered that March.
In the Wendelin Wiedeking era the links with the VW Group grew much closer with his production arrangements for the Cayenne and Panamera. He and his finance director Holger Härter conceived a plan to marshal both Porsche's considerable resources and those of investment bankers Merrill Lynch and UBS to take a major stake in Volkswagen. On Sunday, 25 September 2005 Wendelin Wiedeking shocked the automotive world by announcing that Porsche planned to spend some €3.3 billion to acquire 20 percent of Volkswagen's shares. By the 29th it owned 10.3 per cent of VW AG. By the end of 2005 it had acquired 18.3 per cent of VW's stock, which it gradually built up to a 50.76 per cent shareholding by January of 2009.
Setting up a new structure, Porsche Automobile Holding SE, to own its shares in both companies, Porsche claimed to hold options that could take its share of VW almost to 75 percent. Reaching that figure was crucial because it would give access to VW's store of cash, the money needed to cover the debts that Porsche had run up to fund its attack on Volkswagen, thought to be as much as €14 billion. This triggered a mini-boom in VW shares because the state of Lower Saxony held a 20 per cent stake in VW which it had no intention of selling. Desperate to service the huge debt payments that were threatening bankruptcy, in June of this year Porsche invited an investment from the Gulf-state emirate of Qatar.
For Porsche to have succeeded in its VW takeover it would have needed the European Union successfully to have struck down the special Federal law that gave Lower Saxony the ability to block any acquisition of its shares-and thus any full ownership of the VW Group. The EU did rule against the 'VW Law', after which Germany made some concessions in its provisions but not in the core blocking shareholding. This was the result of a private meeting at an obscure Berlin restaurant on 15 April 2008 between Lower Saxony governor Christian Wulff and Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel. Wulff convinced Merkel not to give way on the legal basis for the blocking holding.
Meanwhile Ferdinand Piëch had decided that the boasting, aggrandising Wiedeking had to be kept away from Volkswagen at all costs. Thanks to an agreement at the depths of Porsche's fortunes in the early 1990s Wiedeking was entitled to 0.9 per cent of Porsche's profits as an annual bonus, which later made him by far Germany's best-paid executive-obscenely so. 'Gradually,' wrote Dietmar Hawranek in Der Spiegel, 'the pinstripes on his suits became wider and the cigars bigger. Wiedeking increasingly spoke in the first person when he was talking about the company. He behaved like a business owner and not like a paid manager whose contract could be terminated at any time.'
For years Piëch and Lower Saxony's Wulff had been at odds over the state's shareholding, which often stood in the way of the greater efficiency that Piëch desired from the company whose supervisory board he chaired. Wulff had lobbied at one time to have Piëch removed from that chairmanship. After a heart-to-heart talk, however, they cleared the air and allied against the incursions of Wiedeking and Härter. The brakes were on their initiative.
On 24 July, after a 15-hour board meeting the previous day and night, VW chief executive Martin Winterkorn announced Porsche's capitulation and the plans to integrate it into the VW Group. 'We can call on our considerable experience in the integration of proud and successful brands rich in tradition,' he said, a clear reference to VW's stewardship of Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti and even Audi, which it has made a major force in the luxury-car market. 'Like Audi today,' he continued, 'Porsche can continue its independent development under the aegis of Volkswagen and preserve its own identity.'
Also announced was the departure of Härter and Wiedeking. For the latter, who envisioned himself as a future head of a combined Porsche and Volkswagen, it was a catastrophic fall from grace. Few tears were shed by his contemporaries for a man who had become an overweening braggart. 'It doesn't matter how much he achieved before,' said the Süddeutsche Zeitung, 'Porsche will now be managed from Wolfsburg. He has gambled away its independence, the most valuable capital such a proud company can possess. That is a terrible blow for Porsche and its employees.'
For Ferdinand Piëch, the quiet and canny engineer whose first goal in business was to match his famous grandfather as the head of a major motor company, success was sweet. Through their Automobile Holding the Porsches and Piëchs now own almost 51 per cent of a car company that is closing on GM to be the world's second largest after Toyota. They've kept their valuable ownership of distribution company Porsche Salzburg, which at one time they might have had to toss into the pot. The family now joins such dynasties as the Agnellis, Fords, Peugeots and Quandts as motor industrialists of the first magnitude. The loss of Porsche's independence was the price.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Didn't Porsche Design the Corvair?
It's an idea that refuses to go away. When Chevrolet introduced its Corvair 50 years ago this autumn, the rumours were rife. Porsche had designed the Volkswagen, hadn't it? And wasn't the Corvair a grown-up Volkswagen? And what did Chevrolet know about designing air-cooled rear-engined cars? Thus it was obvious: Porsche must have designed the Corvair!
The idea had some legs because it wouldn't have been the first time Porsche designed an American car. Between 1952 and 1954 it designed and built prototypes of its Type 542, a four-door saloon for Studebaker with 120-degree V-6 engines, air- or water-cooled to choice. This was a conventional front-engined car albeit with independent suspension for all four wheels.
Thinking that such a full-sized car might not be the answer to Studebaker's prayers, Ferry Porsche also suggested a smaller car, his Type 633. His proposal showed a notchback two-door sedan with a Porsche-like front deck and a 2.0-litre flat-four engine behind the rear wheels. Air-cooled, it had hemispherical cylinder heads. Torsion-bar springs and 13-inch wheels were suggested for an admirably practical 14-foot-long car.
Ferry Porsche later pointed out with a knowing smile that many of the Type 633's features and dimensions foreshadowed those of the Corvair. Its wheelbase was shorter at 102.4 versus 108.0 inches but its track and width were similar. Though it was shorter, its seating would have been adequate with a height of 55.1 inches against the Corvair's 51.5. At just over 80 horsepower its output was to be similar with a top speed much the same at 90 mph. Porsche posited a weight of 2,112 pounds against the Corvair's 2,420.
Similarities notwithstanding, the Type 633 wasn't a Corvair precursor. This was confirmed by Ed Cole, who headed Chevrolet Engineering when the project got under way. 'I didn't talk to anyone at Porsche,' said Cole, 'but I did speak to some of the people at Volkswagen; I had known Heinz Nordhoff quite well when he was at GM.' A senior executive at Opel in Germany in the 1930s, Nordhoff had liaised frequently with his American counterparts.
With Porsche locked into a consulting contract with Volkswagen after the war, Nordhoff may well have told Ferry Porsche about his conversations with Cole. Although its agreement with VW prohibited Porsche from working for any rivals in the Beetle's engine-size category, this wouldn't have barred it from designing a larger-engined car for GM, just as it had for Studebaker. But it didn't. My comprehensive lists of Porsche project numbers show none that could even remotely have been attributable to the Corvair project.
However Porsche did ultimately figure in the Corvair's gestation. Here were Ed Cole's thoughts on its engine: 'Because of its placement the Corvair engine required a low profile, although it was not necessary that it be opposed. Then the question was: should it be a four or a six?' At that time the flat six was more typically an aircraft engine with Franklins, Continentals and Lycomings common in this style. 'In 1950 I logged about 300 hours in a Continental powered C Bonanza,' Cole recalled for L. Scott Bailey, 'flying many times on instruments under unpleasant conditions, and I certainly got to know the great reliability this engine had, and still has for that matter.'
Another influence was a military project undertaken by General Motors. 'In 1950 we were asked by the government to develop a facility to produce another light tank,' Cole explained. 'This was the T41El, later the M 42, and for this we used a 950-cubic-inch supercharged Continental horizontally opposed flat six. So once more we had exposure to an air-cooled engine-a configuration that was straightforward and simple. Naturally all our engineers working on the project became very familiar with this engine.
'From tests we'd done on the four,' Cole continued, 'talks we'd had with engineers at Continental and elsewhere where fours had been built, and our experience with the tank operation, the conclusion came quickly. From the point of view of smoothness and carburetion the six was easier to handle. And, all things considered, it didn't offer too much of an economic barrier. Everybody voted that the Corvair engine ought to be a six.'
The choice of a flat-six engine was unusual at the time with few having been designed specifically for cars. One was an experimental Mercedes-Benz engine of the mid-1930s for a front-wheel-drive prototype. Another was the Tucker six, which in its final design was a liquid-cooled conversion of a Franklin aeroplane engine. Porsche's six-cylinder 911 was almost a decade in the future when Chevrolet had to decide on the configuration of the Corvair's powerplant.
In the early summer of 1957 Chevrolet Engineering bought a Porsche 1600 coupe. We can date it fairly precisely because it had the new teardrop-shaped tail lamps introduced that spring but not yet the exhaust outlets in the bumper overriders of the 1958-model 356s. Its engine was whipped out and put on a dynamometer to be subjected to instrumented tests of temperatures and clearances. Information thus gained helped the Corvair engine's designers, who were having special problems cooling the centre cylinders. This was of course new ground where the Porsche example couldn't help.
The design that evolved could hardly avoid looking like a cross section of a Volkswagen or Porsche engine with its pushrod valve gear and camshaft below the crankshaft. In this it was unlike the aircraft flat sixes which usually had the camshaft above the crank. The Corvair's rectilinear split crankcase with its flared bottom had more of an aircraft flavour, however. Like aircraft sixes the Corvair had four main bearings. Distinctive features were Chevy's stamped-steel rocker arms, introduced on the 1955 V-8, and hydraulic zero-lash tappets to overcome the problem of differential expansion with heat in an engine with finned iron cylinders and aluminium heads. Unlike the Porsche and VW engines the gear drive to the camshaft was at the engine's flywheel end.
Unusually, for what was seen as an economy-car engine, Chevrolet fitted each cylinder bank with its own carburettor. Designer Bob Benzinger said that this was done 'to place the carburettors as close as possible to the inlet ports, achieving good response and maintaining high volumetric efficiency.' This decision showed greater influence by Porsche than by Volkswagen, which made do with a single central carburettor. A penalty was convoluted induction with a choke fitted to the central air cleaner. From 1962 each carb had its own air cleaner.
For engine cooling Chevrolet rejected both the Porsche and VW solutions by placing a centrifugal blower flat above the engine's centre. This best suited the car's design, which required a low rear deck. The solution was even better adapted to the Lakewood estate-car version, which had a load area above the engine. Less successful was the vee-belt drive to the fan, which bent 90 degrees at both sides over pulleys, one of which drove the generator. It's not by chance that one of the events of the Corvair Society of America is called the 'Fan-Belt Toss'.
As the Corvair took shape under the 'Holden 25' code name, its engine was ready for road testing before the first prototype cars. Waiting to accept it was none other than the Porsche 1600 whose engine was being used for cooling experiments. The Corvair six fitted it surprisingly well. In the spring of 1957, at Chevy's freshly minted Engineering Center at Warren, Michigan, the first complete drive train was installed in the Porsche. Eager as a kid, Ed Cole hopped in and belted away. After a high-speed session on the local roads he returned and said with a grin, 'This is it!'
Cole vividly remembered that first encounter with the Corvair-powered Porsche. 'Perhaps the greatest thrill for me personally was the first concrete evidence that the Corvair really came up to our hopes and expectations,' he recalled. 'This came when I test-drove a modified Porsche which contained the new Corvair engine and rear suspension while we were waiting for our first pre-test prototypes of the Corvair to be completed. I drove this car at the GM Technical Center and Milford Proving Grounds in late 1957 and at Pikes Peak, Colorado, in early 1958. She ran beautifully. I knew that we had a winner.'
Ferry Porsche was interested in the Corvair, of course. Through Huschke von Hanstein, his director of PR and motorsports, he arranged to buy one of the first ones made. It would be invidious to suggest that Chevrolet's effort influenced Porsche, but it can't be overlooked that its first prototype engine for the future 911, the Type 745 of 1961, had a four-bearing crankshaft just like the Corvair's. For its final design, of course, Porsche adopted seven main bearings instead. It was a decision that secured the long life of the best flat six ever made.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porschefying History-Part 2
Blazoned on the wall of Porsche's new museum is a quote from Ferry Porsche:
'In the beginning, I looked around and could not find quite the car I dreamed of, so I decided to build it myself.'
An obvious reference to the Type 356, this didn't ring true to me. In my interviews with Ferry in 1973 and '74 he'd neither vouchsafed such a claim nor anything resembling it. Nor did he make a statement of this kind in his books written with John Bentley and Günther Molter. Where did it come from?
Such a remark is profoundly alien to the character of Ferry Porsche. It has an egotistical 'me, me, me' tone of which not a scintilla rings true. Later, to be sure, Ferry would be the touchstone for the design of Porsche cars. He would be the ultimate arbiter of what kinds of Porsches should be made and why. But to suggest that the creation of the first Porsche sports car was the result of a personal whim? A kind of Ferry Porsche 'dream car'? I find this unlikely to the point of sheer fantasy.
When he established his engineering consultancy in 1931, in the trough of the Depression, Ferry's father asked leading engineers to leave paying jobs with Steyr, Daimler-Benz and Austro-Daimler to join his adventure of an independent office that would design motor vehicles for customers. Who was to know whether such an idea was even viable? Would companies be willing to outsource major or even minor engineering tasks? Porsche's credentials were excellent but he needed the help of a qualified team. His prestige and charisma were such that they joined him.
Having formed his team, Ferdinand Porsche was obsessed with the need to maintain employment for his people. Although the first months were hard, he managed it. As his team expanded, the task became no easier. That Porsche undertook many projects for the Third Reich through the war years was in no small measure due to his determination to ensure that his skilled engineers kept gainfully employed.
Ferry inherited this resolve. During the 1930s he took on increased responsibility, by the end of the decade effectively acting as a project manager. In the war years, when his father was preoccupied with the KdF-Wagen factory at Fallersleben and meetings with Nazi bigwigs, Ferry was a vital anchor first at the Zuffenhausen headquarters and from 1943 at Gmünd in Austria whence most of the engineers were evacuated.
Ferry Porsche remained the main man at Gmünd from November of 1945 to August of 1947, the months during which his father and brother-in-law Anton Piëch were detained by the French. While Ferry's sister Louise was active on the business side in these months, securing the future of the Porsche company, Ferry led its technical decision-making with the help of Karl Rabe, the company's veteran chief engineer.
The team at Gmünd was no skeleton crew. By December of 1946 the works employed 222 people, 64 more than it had a year earlier. Thanks to their connections in the motor-racing world, these engineers were initially busy creating road and racing car designs for Turin's Cisitalia. Looking ahead, however, Ferry Porsche yearned for more secure employment for his team. 'What shall we do with such a good staff of workers?' he mused. 'I had some good engineers and mechanics.'
Ferry and Karl Rabe gained food for thought during a visit to Turin in the summer of 1947 to review construction progress on the Grand Prix Cisitalia. At the Turin factory, however, they also saw the way that Cisitalia was using simple, inexpensive Fiat components to make two-seater sports cars that could be sold at high prices and considerable profit. 'It is certain,' said liaison engineer Rudy Hruska, 'that when Porsche built their own sports car they were very influenced by what Cisitalia did with the Fiat parts.'
'We decided to build cars with the people we had,' Ferry told me. 'We designed the car around Volkswagen parts-because it was possible to use VW parts-and the concept of the Auto Union Grand Prix car.' Following the Auto Union's concept, the first prototype was a mid-engined open car. As the relevant drawings show, it was designed initially as a 'VW Two-Seater Sports Car'. At that stage Ferry saw the project as a calling card to help open the door to a renewed relationship with the revived Volkswagen company, Porsche's consulting contract with VW having been rendered moot by the war's end. If VW liked the idea, such a car could be produced by Porsche to carry the Volkswagen name.
On 11 June 1947 the project was officially assigned its Type 356 designation. By July 17th the Porsche team completed drawings of its frame, its general layout and several preliminary body shapes. In designing the frame the men in Gmünd were influenced by the multi-tubular steel space frames they'd seen at Cisitalia in Turin. Requiring a lot of skilled hand labour and little tooling, this type of frame-light and stiff-was ideal for a few experimental cars. However, the Porsche designers were well aware that the labour-intensive design was uneconomical for quantity production.
To mimic the mid-engined design of the Auto Union the VW engine-gearbox package was turned around so the engine was ahead of the rear axle shafts and the transaxle was trailing behind. The engine's about-face caused problems with the VW rear suspension, which was also adapted to the Type 356. In the VW it consisted of enclosed swing-axle shafts whose hubs were guided by a single trailing arm at each side, pivoting from the ends of transverse torsion bars. Each torsion bar was enclosed by a tubular-steel housing that crossed the VW chassis just forward of the transmission.
Moving the engine forward, however, meant that if the radius arms were to remain at their original length there'd be no room for this big transverse tube. So the Porsche planners turned the complete rear suspension assembly around together with the power train. This put the transverse torsion-bar tube at the rear of the chassis and made what were formerly trailing arms into leading arms. In jounce this meant that the geometry encouraged oversteer. However this wasn't pronounced, for with its low centre of gravity and mid-frame weight distribution the 356 rolled little.
Surviving its first outings with few snags, the tubular chassis was fitted with a body during April and May 1948. The Type 356 was ready for the road in the last week of May 1948. By then the likelihood of VW commissioning the car for production had diminished so on its nose, above the decorative aluminium strips that surrounded the license plate, was the name PORSCHE, spelled out in widely spaced extended capital letters-marking the first appearance of a distinctive design which, with only subtle modifications, has been used ever since.
Even before the 356 roadster ran for the first time Ferry Porsche initiated work on what amounted to a completely different car, one that would be built and sold as a Porsche. This, the Type 356/2, marks the true beginning of Porsche evolution. Planned in both coupe and cabriolet models, the Type 356/2 Porsches had a new frame construction, body style and engine position.
Although a coupe body was more difficult to build than a roadster's, it was considered more desirable in the cold-weather climate of central and northern Europe where Porsches were chiefly to be offered. Moreover, the roadster's mid-placed engine sharply reduced the amount of useful space that could be enclosed. To get extra luggage area to make the car more appealing as a versatile touring machine, its engine reverted to the normal VW location. Thus was born the Porsche we know and love.
Anywhere in there did you get the impression that Ferry Porsche created the first Porsche sports car for his own personal gratification? Neither did I. I was flummoxed as to the origin of the Museum quote until I received a recent issue of Porsche Panorama, the magazine of the Porsche Club of America. Fred Senn described in an article his experience of taping Ferry for a long-form TV commercial for the US market, an initiative of Brian Bowler, former British advertising man who was running the US arm of Porsche.
'The professor spoke English well,' wrote Senn, 'but with a heavy accent. Some of the English phrases in our scripts were difficult, so we all sat together at the kitchen table until the professor was comfortable with the meaning and the phrasing.' In the final script, polished by ad men, was the sentence on the Museum wall. Forty years after the fact, Ferry wasn't going to correct this gaggle of reverential Americans. He saw no need to ask them to revisit the gruelling post-war years in which he created the first Porsche not to please himself but to attract the buyers who would secure the future of his team and company.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porschefying History - Part 1
Porsche's magnificent new museum in Zuffenhausen has a feature I like a lot. Its interior is a bright white that sets off the automobiles wonderfully. Many museums and collections hide their cars in the gloom and illuminate them with spotlights that make good photography well-nigh impossible. Maybe that's calculated to sell more postcards, but it isn't a gift to the enthusiast who'd like to take his own snaps. Porsche has met their needs and desires wonderfully.
Having said that, I'm less keen on the polished aluminium shell that's proudly presented as the pre-war Type 64. It's claimed to be a kind of ur-Porsche, progenitor of the Type 356 line, bearing on its nose the Porsche name. Because Porsche doesn't own the one surviving car of this type, it has made a replica body shell instead. That's a very good idea. But it isn't what it pretends to be.
This doesn't represent a Porsche. It represents a Volkswagen - or, to be strictly correct, a KdF-Wagen.
Three cars of this type were designed late in 1938 and built by early 1939 to compete in one of the most exciting races ever conceived. Scheduled for September 1939, the starting point was to be Berlin, the cars racing south over the newly completed Autobahn to Munich. They'd roar on through the Austrian panhandle over the Brenner Pass to Italy, then race over local roads, closed to other traffic, all the way to the finish line in Rome. This Berlin-Rome Race was to traverse three nations from capital to capital over 800 highway miles, an epic contest between the Axis capitals with unlimited propaganda potential.
For the budding Volkswagen - then known as the KdF-Wagen - this race promised a publicity bonanza. The first manufacture of Beetles was projected for September 1939 and the first deliveries for early 1940. The Berlin-Rome Race was a made-to-order opportunity to demonstrate to the world the guts and character of this new German automobile. Of course the stock KdF-Wagen would be out of its element, with only 24 bhp from 985 cc and a top speed of about 65 mph. Still, argued Ferdinand Porsche, special cars could be built on the Type 60 chassis that would perform extremely well. Porsche's view counted because he was one of the three key directors of the KdF-Wagen factory.
To get money to build the cars Porsche approached German's boss of all motor sports, Korpsführer Adolf Hühnlein. He agreed to place an official order for three team cars, funding the effort from the coffers of the German Labour Front that was also building the huge factory that was to produce Beetles. Hühnlein also ordered three special roadsters from BMW to compete in the Berlin-Rome contest.
Retained intact for the racers was the normal Volkswagen platform frame and suspension system with wheelbase and track remaining standard at 94.5 and 50.6 inches respectively. Larger valves, twin carburettors and a higher compression ratio boosted engine power to more than 50 bhp, doubling its normal output. The air-cooled flat four was developed to be reliable at peak power, so the car could take full advantage of the high speeds that were possible between Berlin and Munich on the Autobahn leg of the race.
That fast stretch of road was to be exploited fully by the special aluminium coupe bodies built for the cars by Reutter of Stuttgart. Their design, by Erwin Komenda, ingeniously kept the window pattern, rear-deck louvers and front-deck surface embellishment of a normal Beetle - aesthetic touches which were essential if the three racers were to help promote sales of the standard KdF-Wagen.
From there the special shape went all-out to achieve low drag, with pants enclosing all four wheels and a minuscule coupe cabin. The roof was so narrow that it looked like a single-seater, but the coupe managed to accommodate two people by staggering the passenger seat about a foot to the rear of the driver's seat. A large fuel tank was set into the space thus cleared on the right side of the car's nose. Under the long nose were two spare wheels and tires, which sat on a common plane. Weight of the completed car was less than 1,200 pounds.
In Porsche's annals this was considered to be a special version of the Type 60, its basic Volkswagen project number. Realising that the factory intended to produce 150,000 cars in its first year and to build up eventually to ten times that volume, the engineers realised that some body-style variety would be needed. They'd already started designing variants, of which this was one. Each had a 'K' designation for Karosserie, bodywork. The K series, which included early studies for the Volkswagen saloon body and other styles including a cabriolet and open car, ran from K1 to K12. The Berlin-Rome cars were K10, making them the Type 60K10 Beetles.
Capable of reaching and maintaining 90 mph, the 60K10 was tailored perfectly to the special needs of the Berlin-Rome event. Three cars were ready but the race was not. By September 1939 it was obvious that a major war was commencing and that such a race was out of the question, even on the home territory of the Axis powers. Only in Italy would racing continue into 1940.
Instead of racers the three coupes became valuable and distinctive personal transportation. One was used during the war by Ferdinand Porsche and Josef Goldinger, his chauffeur. Porsche frequently exploited his fast and economical Type 60K10. He and Goldinger once arrived at the Hotel Bristol in the centre of Berlin just an hour and a half after leaving the VW factory. That amounted to a door-to-door average speed of about 85 mph over ordinary local roads!
So there's quite a story behind the Type 60K10 Volkswagen. It's an important and interesting Porsche design in its own right. Why, then, is it masquerading at Porsche's Museum as the Type 64 Porsche, complete with 'Porsche' badging on its nose? There was in fact a Type 64 project, launched in 1937 as a sporting version of the KdF-Wagen, the kind of high-performance variation that Ferdinand Porsche liked to engineer for each of his new car designs. He did this partly to satisfy his own enthusiasm for fast cars and partly as a means of pushing each concept nearer its limits.
Instead of the standard car's one-litre engine, for example, the paper study for the Type 64 proposed enlargement to 1½ litres. Merely sketched rather than fully detailed, the Type 64 was to have an aluminium body and a top-speed potential of 95 mph. 'May we have a budget to build some prototypes?' the Porsches asked the leaders of the German Labour Front during meetings in late 1937 and early 1938. Their replies weren't encouraging. Building and selling a sports car didn't suit the immediate plans of the German Labor Front, which wanted to project a responsible image. In 1938, after all, the German Volk had just begun paying their hard-won savings into a giant layaway plan to buy KdF-Wagens.
Nevertheless the Porsche team believed enough in the potential of a car like the Type 64 to explore the possibility of building it themselves. This would mark a full turn of the wheel for the Porsche family, from working for other car makers to becoming an auto producer in their own right. Looking beyond the design work Porsche was then doing on the VW project, which seemed certain to be one of the biggest the firm could ever hope to get, the idea of actually producing a car offered financial security for the future. Porsche could start out in a small way, in its own new works in Zuffenhausen, expanding later in response to demand.
Because their Type 64 used components from the Type 60, the Porsche people approached the Labour Front officials to make arrangements for buying Type 60 parts in quantity for use in their sports car. This request was also turned down, but for a different reason. Probes of the relevant laws by both parties had concluded that there was no legal way a government-owned company, namely the VW factory, could sell goods to a private firm like Porsche. That decision ended for the time being any and all thoughts of a Porsche sports car based on VW parts. It was also the end of the Type 64.
Manifestly the replica body in the Porsche Museum is of a Type 60K10, not a Type 64, which never existed. On what grounds, then, does it bear 'PORSCHE' badging on its nose? After the war one of the three cars survived intact at the Porsche compound at Zell am Zee, Austria. When Ferry Porsche was gearing up to start making cars at the sawmill in Gmünd he brought the car there and gave it 'PORSCHE' lettering to add credibility to his efforts. As a brand-new auto maker in an out-of-the-way part of the world he needed all the help he could get. Now in private hands, the Volkswagen still bears those misleading letters - imitated on Porsche's replica.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Karl Ludvigsen with a replica of a 1934 A-Type Auto Union
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