# Porsche History: Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche, Zuffenhausen and Volkswagen The story of Porsche from Ferdinand Porsche's design office of 1931 and its wartime work to the 356, the 911, the Piëch years, Volkswagen and the 2022 flotation. Source: https://porschetrails.com/guides/porsche-history/ Porsche the car maker dates from 1948. Porsche the engineering business is older, and its early history is bound up with Volkswagen, with the Third Reich and with one extended family whose members still control both companies. ## Ferdinand Porsche Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 at Maffersdorf in northern Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary. He had little formal training and a great deal of talent. Around 1900 he designed electric and petrol-electric vehicles with wheel-hub motors for the Viennese coachbuilder Lohner. He went on to be technical director of Austro-Daimler, then of Daimler in Stuttgart, where he was responsible for the supercharged Mercedes-Benz S, SS and SSK, and then briefly of Steyr. In 1931 he set up his own design office in Stuttgart. His partners were his son-in-law, the Viennese lawyer Anton Piëch, and Adolf Rosenberger, a businessman and racing driver who provided much of the early finance. The office took commissions from across the industry. The best known were the mid-engined Auto Union Grand Prix cars and, from 1934, a contract from the German government to design an inexpensive people's car. ## The Volkswagen and the war The people's car became the Volkswagen, later known as the Beetle. It was a state project of the Nazi regime, promoted personally by Hitler, and a new factory and town were built for it at what is now Wolfsburg. Ferdinand Porsche became a member of the Nazi party and was given an honorary SS rank. Adolf Rosenberger, who was Jewish, was pushed out of the company in the 1930s, was imprisoned for a time, and emigrated; the question of how he was treated and compensated has been the subject of historical research commissioned in recent years. During the war the Volkswagen works, which Porsche and Anton Piëch helped to run, built military vehicles designed by the Porsche office, including the Kübelwagen and the amphibious Schwimmwagen. The plant used forced labour on a large scale, including concentration camp prisoners. The Porsche office also designed tanks and other weapons. Both companies have since commissioned and published historical studies of this period. In 1944 the design office was moved out of Stuttgart to a former sawmill at Gmünd in Carinthia, Austria. After the war Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch were arrested by the French authorities in December 1945 and held for about 20 months without trial. ## Ferry Porsche and the 356 Ferdinand's son, Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, known as Ferry, was born in 1909 and had worked in the design office from the start. With his father in prison, he and his sister Louise Piëch kept the business going. A contract to design a Grand Prix car for the Italian firm Cisitalia helped to raise the money for their father's release. Ferry then did what he later described as building the car he could not find anywhere else. The first Porsche, the mid-engined 356 No. 1 roadster, was completed at Gmünd in June 1948 using Volkswagen parts. A small series of rear-engined coupés and cabriolets followed. Ferdinand Porsche died in January 1951, having seen the first cars carry his name. An agreement with Volkswagen in 1948 was just as important. It gave Porsche a royalty on every Beetle built and access to Volkswagen's dealers and service network, while Louise Piëch's company in Salzburg became the Volkswagen importer for Austria. That income underwrote the sports car business in its first years. ## Zuffenhausen In 1950 Porsche returned to Stuttgart and began building the 356 in rented space at the Reutter coachworks in Zuffenhausen. The company has been there ever since. The [356](/models/356/) sold steadily, did well in racing, and was particularly successful in the United States. The [911](/models/911-classic/) followed in 1964. Its shape was the work of Ferry's eldest son, Ferdinand Alexander 'Butzi' Porsche, and among the engineers who developed its flat-six engine was Ferry's nephew, Ferdinand Piëch, who went on to lead the racing programme that produced the 917 and Porsche's first overall win at Le Mans in 1970. ## The family steps back By the early 1970s there were too many family members with strong views in the business. In 1972 the company was reorganised as a joint-stock company and the family agreed to withdraw from day-to-day management. Butzi Porsche founded Porsche Design. Ferdinand Piëch went to Audi, where he was responsible for the quattro, and later became chairman of Volkswagen. The development centre at Weissach, west of Stuttgart, opened in the same period. The following decades brought the front-engined [924, 944](/models/944-transaxle/) and 928, a plan to end the 911 that was reversed in the early 1980s, and a serious financial crisis in the early 1990s. Under Wendelin Wiedeking, chief executive from 1993, Porsche adopted Japanese production methods, launched the [Boxster](/models/boxster-cayman-986-987/) and the water-cooled [996](/models/911-996/), and then in 2002 the Cayenne, built at a new plant in Leipzig. It became, for a time, the most profitable car maker in the world per vehicle sold. ## Porsche and Volkswagen From 2005 Porsche's holding company began buying shares in the much larger Volkswagen, and by 2008 it was attempting a full takeover. The financial crisis and the debt taken on to fund the purchases ended the attempt. In 2009 the two sides agreed to combine instead: Volkswagen bought just under half of the Porsche car business that year and the rest in 2012. The outcome is a circular structure. Porsche AG, the car maker, is controlled by Volkswagen. Volkswagen's largest shareholder, with a majority of the voting rights, is Porsche SE, the holding company owned by the Porsche and Piëch families. In September 2022 a minority of Porsche AG's shares was floated on the Frankfurt stock exchange, and Porsche SE took a direct stake of a little over a quarter of the ordinary shares. ## Today The 911 is still built at Zuffenhausen, alongside the Taycan, and every model is still developed at Weissach. The [Stuttgart loop](/trails/stuttgart-porsche-loop/) describes how to visit the museum and drive the roads between the two. For the racing side of the story, see [famous Porsche drivers](/guides/famous-porsche-drivers/) and [famous Porsche cars](/guides/famous-porsche-cars/).