9781422285190

Foundation and Early History

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In 1931 Ferdinand Porsche founded his design consultancy company: Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH. The Porsche Engineering Office, based in Stuttgart, was established to provide a design service for various means of transportation including airplanes, trains, boats, and, of course, motor vehicles. The first project arrived from the Wanderer Company – to design a 1.7-liter six-cylinder 35 bhp engine. As Dr. Porsche did not want the

Wanderer contract to appear as the first, and to avoid any doubts that he lacked experience in this field, he labeled it the Porsche Type 7 and continued to number the subsequent cars in consecutive order. This explains why there aren’t any early designed models that are labeled one to six. Wanderer soon returned with more business, and requested a more powerful engine: the result was a 2.0-liter six-cylinder 40 bhp engine. In the

August of 1931, Ferdinand Porsche registered a patent for the torsion bar suspension – a development that would be used internationally for several decades and is considered a significant achievement in automotive history. In 1932, the Auto Union Company (which would later become the present-day Audi) took over the car division of Wanderer in a merger between Horch, Audi, and DKW. Impressed by the