Porsche Family: A Sawmill 356, the 901 Name Swap and Volkswagen Control

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1931 Ferdinand Porsche founded an engineering consultancy in Stuttgart with Anton Piëch and Adolf Rosenberger. A German government contract produced the Volkswagen Beetle, and during World War II the firm built the Kübelwagen and the Schwimmwagen and designed the Elefant tank destroyer and the Maus super-heavy tank. Ferdinand was a member of the Nazi party and the SS, his son Ferry was an SS volunteer, Rosenberger, the Jewish co-founder, was driven out of the business and the country, and the company used thousands of forced laborers marked with a P for Poland. In December 1945 the French arrested Ferdinand for war crimes and held him 20 months without trial.

Meanwhile Ferry built the first 356 in a sawmill in Gmünd, Austria, hand-hammering aluminum over wooden bucks around Beetle parts, and the car was road certified in 1948. The firm returned to Stuttgart by 1950, and Ferdinand died after a stroke in 1951. Ferry's son F.A. Porsche designed the 911, clashing with body chief Erwin Komenda. In 1972 Ferry, influenced by Soichiro Honda, made Porsche an AG and barred the family from management; F.A. founded Porsche Design and nephew Ferdinand Piëch rose to chair the Volkswagen Group. A 2022 IPO valued Porsche at about 75 billion euros, but 2025 operating profit fell about 98%.

• The company's formal name spelled out Ferdinand Porsche's honorary engineering doctorate.
• The Schwimmwagen became the most mass-produced amphibious car in history.
• The crest, created in the early 1950s, combines the arms of Württemberg with Stuttgart's black horse.
• Peugeot's claim to three-digit names with a middle zero turned the Project 901 into the 911.
• The 2025 slump included a 3.9 billion euro EV write-down and a 26% drop in China sales, yet through Porsche SE the Porsche and Piëch families hold controlling votes in Volkswagen.