Ferdinand Porsche: From the Beetle and Nazi Tanks to the 356 Sawmill

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Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Bohemia, the son of a master panel beater, and never earned an engineering degree, sitting in on classes at the Imperial Polytechnical College at night. In Vienna he joined coachbuilder Jacob Lohner & Company and built electric cars with motors in the wheel hubs, shown at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition, but the batteries weighed 1,800 kilograms. In 1901 he added a gasoline engine driving a generator, creating the Lohner-Porsche Mixte, the first petroleum-electric hybrid on record. He chauffeured Archduke Franz Ferdinand during military service, became chief designer at Austro-Daimler in 1906, then joined Daimler in Stuttgart and built Mercedes-Benz SSK racers. Daimler rejected his small people's car, and in 1931 he founded his own firm with Anton Piëch and financier Adolf Rosenberger.

After Hitler called for a people's car at the 1933 Berlin Motor Show, Porsche won the Volkswagen contract while Auto Union built his P-Wagen racer. He became a German citizen in 1934, joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and rose to SS-Oberführer. In the war his firm produced the Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen, and as chairman of the Panzer Commission he proposed a petrol-electric Tiger that the army rejected; his 90 finished chassis became Elefant tank destroyers, and he built the 100-ton Maus. By early 1945 only 10 percent of the Volkswagen workforce was German. French authorities held him for 20 months as a war criminal. His son Ferry paid for his release with the Cisitalia contract, and in a sawmill at Gmünd, Austria, the family built the first Porsche 356.

• Rosenberger was jailed in a concentration camp and fled Germany, and his 10 percent stake was bought by Porsche and Piëch at nominal value.
• Many Elefants were lost to breakdowns and scuttled by their own crews.
• Forty-nine 356s were hand built at Gmünd, and more than 78,000 followed over 17 years.
• Porsche held a royalty on every Volkswagen Beetle built.
• In December 2022 Linz, Austria, removed his name from a street over his role in the Nazi war economy.