the origins of the Porsche 911 could be
traced back beyond World War two in the
early 30s dr. Ferdinand Porsche racing
driver and engineer established his own
freelance automotive design company in
Germany Porsche had already designed
cars for Daimler and mercedes-benz but
his own idea was far removed from
traditional limousines that only the
rich could afford Porsches car would be
cheap enough for working-class people to
buy
Adolf Hitler also wanted to build a
people's car or a Volkswagen
he met with Borgia and they decided on
specifications for the new vehicle
the German automobile companies wanted
to avoid competition they refused to
cooperate with Porsche and Hitler
decided to nationalize the project with
the money coming from the state
sponsored German labor front
Hitler insisted that the car be cheap
economical and easy to repair it should
also accommodate a family of four or
five and be able to cruise at sixty
miles an hour on his new autobahns many
working-class families had no garages so
the design used an air-cooled engine to
avoid freezing radiators in the winter
engineering tests of the early VW
carried out in 1936 were extremely
successful
Ferdinand Porsche jr. known as ferry was
in charge of the final development of
the car
the body was styled by Porsha's
brilliant associate Irvin commenda
on Hitler's insistence the Volkswagen
factory was set up at Wolfsburg right in
the middle of Germany
in 1938 the new factory site was
dedicated in Grand Nazi style
in 1939 a great car race was to run from
Berlin to Rome through the heart or
through countries
for some time Ferdinand and fairy
Porsche had discussed the idea of a
sports car based on Volkswagen parts
they had not been able to interest the
labor front but now there was propaganda
value in such a car
the front saw an advantage to be gained
by entering a Volkswagen based car in
the Berlin Rome competition
Hitler could not resist any propaganda
opportunity porsche was given access to
volkswagen parts in ordered to build the
sports car
the result was the type 60 k10 three
were built for the Berlin to Rome race
but they would never compete the
outbreak of World War two changed the
world's priorities
with German industrial might now focused
on the war effort the Porsche company
could no longer design sports cars
from the Porsche drafting boards came
drawings for a series of military
vehicles including various tank designs
with the end of the war in 1945 the
peace conferences began the British
blocked Porsches access to his money
they told him he would never design
automobiles again
looking for work the Porsche family went
to France to discuss a French VW project
it came to nothing
they were jailed for assisting the
German war effort in 1946 after six
months in prison ferry was released he
returned to government Austria
there he and his sister Luise
established the porsche design
corporation
dr. Porsche was held in prison for
another 15 months he was 70 and prison
life took its toll he would never again
be the same forceful dynamic innovator
in Austria the Porsches were approached
to design a Grand Prix car for the
Italian chassis italia company the
Volkswagen based sports car had never
left Ferries mine and the kiss Italia
offer was very timely they were kind of
financially destitute after the war and
needed money to get going and
fortunately they had a lot of friends
and helped them with a lot of different
things but they really needed money to
break away and get going and Cisitalia
gave them money in 1947 ferry Porsche
and chief designer Karl rava began
planning a sports car around Volkswagen
components On June 11 the project
officially began as the type 356
two prototypes were built a coupe and an
open roadster both used the air-cooled
VW engine the reason that they stuck
with erekle cars when they did the
sports car the 356 was they didn't have
the money to do anything else
they had to use the basis of somebody
else's car as a development tool and and
they used the engines for votes on the
cars were quick and lively on mountain
roads and demand grew Porsche moved back
to Germany to a makeshift plant at
Sylvan Howsam the first buyers were car
enthusiasts in Switzerland then Porsches
popularity increased in Germany but
there was an unexpected market in a much
more distant part of the world in
America's post-war boom not everyone
wanted the large family car is being
produced for the growing suburbs but
still Porsche did not expect great
things from America very porsche hired
car dealer max Hoffman to introduce the
356 to America max Hoffman was that
became the importer for both Volkswagen
and Porsche and a lot of the foreign
cars and he kept trying to tailor the
car to what he felt was more the
American market I would say the primary
reason that the Porsche became popular
in America is because of its uniqueness
no other car looked like a Porsche no
other car had the engine configuration
of the Porsche rear engine air cooling
and frankly few other cars drove like a
Porsche Porsches up to a certain level
are very easy cars to drive quickly one
element of Porsches early success was
suitability for racing
owners of stock 356 has found they could
drive to the track competing club races
and drive home again for Porsche
development of pure racing models was a
problem the company had no cash to fund
them
Porcia has always been a company that
has believed that racing improves the
breed and so consequently from their
earliest days they raced the cars that
they built the problem is when you're a
small company with not a lot of money
someone has to pay for it
so I call this the Tom Sawyer offense
syndrome you get someone else to paint
the fence and or finance your racing by
selling them cards so all through the
years Porsche has built customer racing
cars in addition to the cars that they
themselves run as kind of the prototype
for for whatever series they happen to
be in in the early 50s most of the
world's car manufacturers were trying to
mechanize production as far as possible
Porsche did things its own way its cars
were almost completely and built
by 1955 Porsches reputation was
spreading throughout the world demand
had increased to an extent unimaginable
Porsche originally he meant to produce
only 500 cards
after just seven years the Porsche 356
had become one of the most sought-after
sports cars in the world it was a
brilliant start that laid a foundation
for the legend of Porsche
the success of Porsche and the 356 was a
paradox it was small and Spartan it was
not very powerful and driving it
required special skills like the
Volkswagen the 356 had a rear engine so
most of its weight was in the back and
it had independent rear suspension
because the 911 and its predecessor the
356 is a rear-engine car you have all
this mass at the back of the car you can
picture that as a hammer with a head on
it all the weight being on one end
that's the end that's going to want to
swing up the early cars were terrific
cars you can go very fast in them but if
you made the mistake of going into a
corner very very fast and suddenly
lifting off the throttle it took a lot
of driving to get yourself out of that
position it was built to drive fast and
to be fun learning to overcome the
porsche oversteer was just part of the
entertainment porsche had high quality
control standards every engine was
hand-built throughout production parts
of each engine were marked to keep them
together
there were no annual model changes
Portia believed in evolution over a
manufacturing life of more than 15 years
the principles of the 356 remained the
same detail changes increased power
output and efficiency Porsche developed
associations with an affluent carefree
lifestyle
it was the most European of sports cars
elegant sophisticated and engineered
with great precision and quality it
found buyers in Britain in competition
with England's own strong tradition of
small sports cars
Porsche cars were not engineered using
daily driving as design criteria they
were designed and built from the outset
to endure the stresses of high
performance they were built for racing
the race track was the testing ground
for many of the cars changes
back in 1952 ferry Porsche appointed
Baron fritz von Karnstein as director of
racing and started development of a
purebred racer the 550
one of the most famous car races in the
world is the 24 Hours of LeMans
Porsche had been competing there
successfully since 1951 by 1955 the
Porsche entry featured the Spyder
competition car a development of the 550
prototype
in the very early years of racing
Porsche basically was racing
production-based cars and they were
small cars and they really didn't have a
snowball's chance and competing against
Ferrari and bigger cars like that
they often won class but they never won
overall 1955 was a good year for Porsche
at LeMond they dominated two classes and
for the first time looked competitive
for outright victory Porsche was fast
becoming a maker of serious competition
machines the knowledge gained on the
track was reinvested into the road cars
in 1955 there was a big step in the
evolution of the Porsche 356 the racing
engine of the 550 Spyder was installed
in a standard production 356 body the
new car was named after the Mexican road
race la Carrera Panamericana it was
called the Carrera
in late 1959 the 356b was introduced
with an optional new engine the super 90
in 1963 came the last development of the
356 line the 356 II
this late-model 356 roadster shares with
all of its predecessors the simple lines
and Spartan interior so strongly
associated with Porsche
by the late 50s fairy Porsche had
decided that the Volkswagen derived
four-cylinder engine of the 356 had been
developed as far as it would go it was
time for a change
they saw a need for a new car they've
been building the 356 for over a decade
in almost 15 years they decided they
they needed a new car and they did a lot
of design studies to see what that new
car would be and one of the concepts was
to make it a four passenger car and they
essentially just decided they didn't
like the way the fourth passenger
versions of the cars look it didn't
fulfill what they thought was important
at what was becoming the end of the 356
his lifetime the car was too small
not fast enough and yet pretty expensive
and that's when Porsche and this would
have been in the late 50s and early 60s
decided that the 356 needed a
replacement Porsche based his ideas for
change on the principle of evolution
that had brought great worldwide success
old dr. Porsche had seen the company
passed to a new generation of the family
now ferried Porsche would call on
talents from the third generation of the
growing Porsche dynasty his own eldest
son Ferdinand Alexander Bootsy Porsche
would not hesitate to accept the
challenge
it was the early 1960s Porsche was
gearing up for a change in the line
fairy son Bootsie was responsible for
the body styling of the new car great
care was taken to disguise that shape
from the industrial spies and magazine
photographers the prototype was given a
false front and a strange pair of fins
at the rear
the new car the 901 was shown to the
public for the first time at the 1963
Frankfurt Motor Show but it was not yet
ready for release the French company
Poirot
claimed they had the rights to car names
using three digits with a zero in the
middle Porsche back down they changed
their 0 to a 1 and the 911 was born the
cars shape was related to the older 356
as was the most important new element
the engine
it was also air-cooled but developed
greater horsepower from six cylinders
and twin overhead camshafts
this footage was shot by Porsha's head
of development helmet but during tests
of the new car in the winter of 1963-64
the prototypes were subjected to a
rigorous testing program modifications
were made to the rear suspension as a
result of these tests with the
improvements in the new car came an
increased sticker price when the 911
came out in sixty three sixty four one
of the hurdles it had to face was the
fact that here again was a small car
that cost six thousand dollars being
sold in a market where you could buy an
awful lot of performance say in a
Corvette for that kind of money or less
you had to convince people that this was
a German car that it was built back then
practically by hand and that the
performance levels while not as high as
perhaps you know under Corvette were
still very very good
the introduction of the new body led to
a major economic change for Porsche the
Reuter Body Works which had built the
bodies for the 356 was unwilling to
spend the money to retool for 911
production they decided to sell the
company instead Porsche was forced to
buy it and had great difficulty scraping
the capital together but it was an
investment that had to be made
it was Porsches first major financial
setback since the 356 became a
successful car
the 911 had a maximum speed of around
130 miles per hour at first there were
mixed reactions for motoring journalists
about the handling and ride but the
buying public accepted it with open arms
and sales demand was strong
by the mid 60s the Porsche Empire was
growing a less expensive version of the
911 the 912 was offered to the public it
was an immediate success in 1966 the
first four year in which the nine eleven
and the nine twelve were available
almost 13,000 cars were sold 9000 of
these were 912 Porsche had difficulty
keeping up with demand
the bodies were now their responsibility
they could not build enough they were
forced to contract some of the work out
the Karman firm had built bodies for
Porsche before and agreed to help Carmen
were expensive but they were the only
company offering the quality Porsche
demanded
more than 15 years have passed since the
first Porsches entered production
technology had improved enormously but
the Porsche was still largely a
hand-built car
the 911 was designed as a hardtop coupe
but a lot of Porsches success in the
past had come from their open-topped
roadsters Bootsy Porsche set out to
design an open-topped version of the 911
open-top cars are synonymous with the
whole idea of a sports car and the
earliest Porsches back in the 50s and
early 60s were roadsters and
convertibles when the 911 came along
Porsche had to introduce a convertible
unfortunately at that time America was
having problems with safety people were
concerned about what happens when the
car rolls over Porsche said all right
we'll put a target top on the car so
they basically built a integral roll bar
into the car and called it a Targa it
was kind of unique at the time now
you've seen other people do it the
original car had a little plastic window
in it but that wasn't very practical so
ultimately they stuck in glass and that
concept remained in production up until
the last couple of years now
the targa was a success demand far
exceeded supply Porsche was able to
widen its market throughout the world
the level of skill necessary for a rally
driver to be competitive is far beyond
that of a normal driver rally drivers
fell in love with a 911 and its
performance
United States their ally not meaning too
much when you say rally in United States
that now start to be a busy man also but
in Europe is very strong in Europe
rallying is very very popular in force
yourselves at least 50% and 60% of its
cars over there
to build its image Porsche got involved
in rallying Farida car monte carlo rally
with a lot of success a 911 in
particular is a perfect rally car the
911s potential for competition was
underlined by a class win in the 1965
monte carlo rally
three years later in 1968 the Porsche
team of L Ford and stone won the Monte
Carlo outright
in 1970 porsche won its third
consecutive outright monte carlo rally
it was the first time any manufacturer
had won three times in a row the trophy
was presented to the porsche team by
prince rainier and princess grace demand
for rally conversions to the stock 911
prompted porsche to set up its own
internal workshop for potential rally
contenders
the extent of modifications was limited
only by the depth of the customers
pockets
by the late 1960s all appeared to be
going well but cracks had been
developing below the surface and were
about to emerge the two branches of the
Porsche family differed about the way
the company should be run and who should
run it in 1971 a worried very porsche
called a family summit meeting its
outcome would change the company forever
Fairey said that family members in key
positions were blocking the rise of
better qualified people all including
himself should step down an era was
ended
by the early 1970s the Porsche family
was no longer involved in day-to-day
management Ernst Furman was chief
executive dedicated to making the 911
the best sports car in the world he
wanted to produce a GT racer derived
from the 911 the Carrera RS was
conceived Porsche being a car company
that has raced the cars that it builds
in many cases found like everyone else
has that you can only get so much
performance out of a road car because
the cars are heavy they're not very
powerful so what you start doing is
removing weight and making the engines
more powerful this is how the car like
the Carrera RS was born they basically
gutted the 911 put in a killer motor and
made a very fast production based race
car
since 1963 the 911 had evolved gradually
with model changes introducing higher
performance and new styling details
in the mid 70s with Furman's
encouragement Porsche began experiments
with turbocharged racing engines there
were problems but these engines gave
spectacular performance
when Porsche introduced the turbo it was
one of the first companies to use turbo
charging in a production car there had
been an earlier effort on the part of
Chevrolet with the Corvair but it never
really came to anything no one really
knew too much about turbochargers as a
performance device that they were on
trucks they were on airplanes problem
with the turbocharger is turbo lag it
takes a while for the turbocharger to as
they say in the business spool up the
early turbo was a very fast car when the
turbo spooled up but there was that
momentary pause before the turbo came up
where you were just sitting there
waiting for something to happen during
the fall of 1975 a magnificent new beast
arrived in the u.s. it was a legacy of
Porsches racing operation and had fender
flares huge rear tires and a rear
spoiler within the company it was known
as the 930 but the insignia on the rear
who had read turbo Carrera no standard
production car legally imported into the
United States could match its
performance turbo Carreras could cover
large expanses of real estate very
quickly
in 1974 they introduced the nine-30
turbo as a basis for a car that they
were going to race they thought in 1979
Porsche owners who wanted higher
performance could now have it if they
had the money in 1978 there was a rumor
that a special 911 was on the way the
current 911s had been very satisfactory
and no one dreamed that in one model
years such improvements could be
achieved while many companies in the
automotive industry make major changes
from one model year to the next
Porsche was known to evolve gradually
but suddenly the cars being unloaded at
the docks had three liter engines
instead of the 2.7 liter units of
previous years they also looked more
aggressive with flared rear quarter
panels and 7 inch wide tires a look at
the engine lid revealed a new emblem 911
SC
as as nice a car as the early 9/11 was
it didn't have the power it didn't have
the handling of the competition this
would have been like in the early 70s
Porsche kept upping the ante building a
bigger 911
finally what it came down to in the late
70s was the 911s see bigger motor bigger
rear wheels slightly flared fenders a
perfect driving car and yet a superb
sports car the letters SC last appeared
on the 1964 and 65 Porsche 356
high-performance models they were
superior cars to their predecessors in
the same way more than a decade later
the 911 SC was elite beyond the previous
911s
Porcia had a winner in the SC throughout
its six-year production run had scored
rave reviews from owners and critics
apart from the introduction of the
convertible or cabriole a few changes
were made to the car
in Portia's early days owners formed
Porsche clubs that now span the world
and since the 1950s
Porsche has helped organize performance
driving schools
here Porsche owners can drive fast under
controlled conditions and get a better
feel for their car's handling and
performance qualities
in 1977 Porsche introduced the 928 this
car was a complete reversal for Porsche
and was a result of their desire to
appeal to other sectors of the market
the 928 had a liquid-cooled engine in
the conventional position at the front
of the car it threatened the future of
the 911 in the mid-1970s
porsche engineers were concerned about
the 911 meeting emission standards with
an air-cooled engine they felt with the
new standards on a horizon they couldn't
meet it the idea they came up with was
the 928 water-cooled v8 and a different
car the polical car actually at one
point it was faster car than a 911 and
it handled very well was one major
problem it did not look like a Porsche
which in the eyes of the public was a
911 the 911 refined by years of
development on the racetrack was
reprieved
six years had passed since the
introduction of the 911 SC Portia was on
the brink of launching the next
generation 911 the Carrera
the Carrera was introduced in 1983 in
coupe Targa and Cabriolet versions it
quickly became the envy of the sports
car world the body was similar to
previous models but under the hood was a
3.2 liter engine which in its European
form put out an incredible 231
horsepower
Peter shoots arrived at Porsche in
January 1981 as chairman of the board of
management one of the first to realize
that Porsche engineers had a new
champion was engineering chief Helmut
but he told Shutts some of his ideas for
a future 911 he thought all-wheel drive
might be a possibility there was an echo
from deep in Porsches past back in the
30s a design study suggested a
four-wheel drive system for the
Volkswagen project it was adopted and
produced during World War two in a
variety of forms
in the mid-1980s porsche began
development on a new 911 known inside
the company as the 959 it retained the
basic 911 shape but under the skin it
had a new drive system that powered all
four wheels from the earliest days of
the motor car engineers knew that
four-wheel drive was better than
two-wheel drive in 1981 Porsche
reintroduced that principle this time in
the 911 they ran it in rallies in the
Monte Carlo Rally
Farida car and did very well with it
then they introduced it in a car called
959 which was the ultimate Road car
helmet BOTS goal of proving the 959 was
a good long distance car culminated in
the running of the 1986 Paris Dakar
Rally this is one of the most grueling
motorsports events in the world experts
said the race could only be won by an
off-road vehicle
they said the 959 was far too complex to
take such punishment
On January 22nd 1986 after 21 days of
endless assault the dust settled over
the 8750 miles of desert out of 500
starters and only 80 finishers Porsche
took 1st 2nd and 6th
the development of the 959 laid the
foundation for a new generation of 911
it's major design elements were
incorporated in this production car and
released to the market as the 911
Carrera 4
in 1988 Porsche having seen the success
of all-wheel drive in its rally cars and
in the 959 introduced the all-wheel
drive principle in the next version of
the 911 which was called the Carrera for
the first cars were all-wheel drive cars
followed approximately a half a year or
a year later by the two-wheel drive
version of that car totally new chassis
underneath larger engine all-wheel drive
the Carrera 4 was very different from
any previous Porsche while it looked
virtually the same as the 911 under the
skin 85% of the car was new
it had a computer control drive system
the engine which until 1989 retained
many parts of the original flat-six
air-cooled model was also virtually new
the technology that drives the
development of Porsche cars originates
here in the Porsche development center
at vie sock in Germany work done here
affects both racing and production
advances in technology have forced some
automation on the Porsche production
line but much of each car is still built
by hand
in the early days the design process was
largely piece of paper a pencil
the man's imagination nowadays
everything is computers it still takes a
deft hand and a creative mind to come up
with design but the computers help a lot
at Porsche every eighth station is still
a quality control check every fifteenth
Porsche off the line undergoes an eleven
hundred point quality inspection I think
one of the things that Porsche has it
appeals to Porsche enthusiasts as the
the Germanic attention to detail to
German whereas most other enthusiast
cars are 8090 percent there and then the
rest is left to your imagination
Porcia will not be hurried there was
great pre-production demand for the
Carrera 4 but a Porsche executive said
last week we built 12 next week we may
build a few more quality must come first
we'll worry about numbers later
Portia's racing legacy continues to grow
in 90's races such as the supercar
series
in 1991 Hurley Haywood drove his 911
turbo to the first supercar championship
and with his teammates he brought
Porsche the first super car
manufacturers trophy
by 1993 the team of Haywood and hand
stuck at won three consecutive Super Car
championships for Porsche
the end of 1994 marked another change
for Porsche the 1995 Carrera 4
incorporated the most sweeping changes
attempted in 30 years of building fine
sports cars
the latest Carrera por all-wheel drive
Porsche is to my way of thinking the
best 911 at any count it has the
characteristics of a 911 which is a very
crisp feel and yet it has all-wheel
drive but only when you need it if the
front wheels Drive only when the rear
wheels absolutely are losing so much
traction that they have to transfer
power to the front consequently the car
drives like a two-wheel drive car under
normal circumstances like an all-wheel
drive car under really adverse
conditions it's the best of all worlds
whatever they do they're always going to
have to have a 911 whatever that car
really is
it'll have to fill that hole
Ferdinand Alexander Bootsy Porsche gave
the family seal of approval he said the
new 911 Carrera is an absolutely worthy
and masterfully made successor to all
previous 911s
Porcia sales declined from the mid-1980s
through early 90s the current 911 is the
result of the change is made to appeal
to today's market
it appears that at least for the
foreseeable future the 911 line will
continue
the 911 is designed by people who love
cars it is meant for people who love
driving cars
it is expensive small and impractical
but for 30 years it has been coveted by
the Porsha faithful and desired not only
by the few who can afford one but by
millions who wish they could