The tales of how car companies began are always interesting and Porsche is no different. Porsche was founded by Ferdinand Porsche, who was a key person for the German unified armed forces known as the Wehrmacht. He had a crucial role in developing airplanes, racing cars, and developing tanks. He had greater than a thousand patents as an automobile engineer, and grew to be chief engineer for Mercedes-Benz in the 1920s. Later he built the Volkswagen, after setting up his own engineering workshop. He was initially the operations chief at a factory in Wolfburg that was manufacturing Volkswagens and was retained there by Allies at the end of World War II.

A couple of years after he was discharged, Ferdinand Porsche and his son, Ferry, started creating the Porsche 356. It was a sports car much like a Volkswagen, with a rear-mounted, four-cylinder boxer engine. Nevertheless, the car possessed a maximum speed of 87 mph so it was not a very powerful sports car.  Although it was not a speed demon, the car possessed a very classy and innovative design as a convertible and, later, as a hard top. The car was developed at a workshop owned or operated by Erwin Komenda who was famous for streamlining auto production in Germany. Komenda was at Porsche since the VW Beetle and was in charge of sheet metal and design techniques.

Komenda developed the fashionable closed coupe referred to as the fastback, which had become the symbol of the european sports car. Porsche’s grandson, together with Komenda continued this tradition with the 911. With its desirable, sloping bonnet, the 911 became easily recognizable, primarily with the frog eye headlights, the straight waistline, and curves running on the top edge of the windscreen to the rear bumper. While the style was much like the first Porsche, technically, it had been more like the BMW 1500. Although the design was a bit debatable, the 911 took over as the symbol of what Porsche was all about. 

The business almost was destroyed, when the new designers in the 1970s and 1980s attempted to move away from its legendary design.  Cars such as the 928 and the 924, which were both co-developed with Volkswagen, failed to capture the imagination of the auto industry. But in the 1990’s, the company recognized that the classic designs were timeless and that resulted in a resurrection to profitability. The classic 911 prolonged to evolve as virtually forty individuals in the design department worked on refining it. One example is the impressive race car/sport car hybrid, 911 GTI which was put together by in-house designer, Anthony R Hatter.

The Boxter established up a new array of styles for Porche in 1999. Porsche has gotten a long history and was able to overcome some very lean years to become profitable again. They were capable of succeed at a transitional period in the  auto industry where  main car companies were losing  money  and  going  bankrupt.

The one and only time I nearly bought a Porsche was when I was abroad! I say bought, what I really mean is for the day - I nearly did a Car Hire Spain but it was just a little too expensive for me!