Chapter 6

Racing in Their Blood

The early car-design career of Ferdinand Porsche teaches us a powerful lesson. It is that he believed wholeheartedly in subjecting a new design to the rigors of competition. He manifested this conviction with all his early designs. Few indeed were those that in one form or another he didn’t put to the test of a race, sprint, rally

or hillclimb. It mattered not whether it was a small car or large luxury model. If it could be tested against its rivals on road or track, Porsche would do so.

He had several reasons for this. One of course was that dedicated proving grounds were still far in the future. Cars were tested on the road, and when measured against their rivals this gave a good index of engineering progress. Those rivals could most easily be found in open competitions. Another was that success in races and hillclimbs was an excellent source of publicity. This was a powerful incentive in the industry’s early years and indeed was still strong moti-vation for racing participation in the twenty-first century.

Yet another reason was that Ferdinand Porsche found that he really enjoyed fast driving. He proved this with his long journeys across the continent of Europe at a time when roads left a lot to be desired. Porsche soon developed a take-no-prisoners style at the wheel. “He was a very, very rough driver, more of a racing style,” recalled his grandson Ernst Piëch. “He would always get faster and faster and faster. He couldn’t really see a car in front of him. He’d always be looking in the mirror, but not in front. But he was very good—a very good driver.”1

A further reason for taking part in the early competitions was that they were planned and designed to improve the state of the art. While from 1906 the French concentrated on their Grand Prix races, circuit competitions for out-and-out racing cars, the Germans turned to events for four-seaters that were framed to promote progress in the design of road cars. Germany’s Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was among the most auto-friendly monarchs. We recall the Kaiser’s backing for the 1907 Taunus races in which tire problems kept Porsche’s Mixtes from competing. His younger brother, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, was an authentic car enthusiast who even held a patent on a windshield wiper.

Touring cars were catered to by a new event launched in 1905, the Herkomer Cup. This was the brainchild of Prof. Hubert von Herkomer, who returned to his native Bavaria after a spell in Britain to encourage an event for amateurs driving ordinary autos. A Mercedes was the 1905 winner, a Horch in 1906 and a Benz in 1907, the Herkomer’s final year.

1. Ernst Piëch said that his mother inherited a similar driving style.

PREVIOUS PAGE: At Bad Homburg, en fête for the finish of the 1910 Prince Heinrich tour, the victorious team posed on the cobbles with Count Schönfeld on the left, Eduard Fischer in the center and Porsche on the right. These were demonstrably the fastest touring cars of their day.

THIS PAGE: While his crew members argued procedures with officials, left, Ferdinand Porsche waited impatiently at the wheel of his entry in the 1909 Prince Heinrich tour. His was the shaft-drive car while his teammates had chain-drive models, similarly capable of 73 mph.

145

146

REPLACING THE HERKOMER CUP in 1908 was a new German competition, the Prince Heinrich Trial.2 Complex rules guided the design of entries by regulating bore sizes in relation to car weight, requiring four seats of specific sizes and demanding that entrants be true owner-drivers who had covered at least 1,200 miles in their cars before the start. Nevertheless many cars were unabashed factory machines including the winning Benz and second-place Mercedes in 1908. No Austro-Daimlers took part, but news of the event was brought back to Vienna by Reichen-berger Automobil-Fabrik driver and backer Alfred Ginzkey and a loyal supporter of Laurin & Klement cars from Bohemia’s Mlada Boleslav, Count Alexander Kolowrat. A colorful figure in Viennese motoring circles, the Count was a keen motorcyclist as well as film producer.

Ferdinand Porsche, now well into his stride at Austro-Daimler, decided with company General Manager Eduard Fischer to field a team in the Prince Heinrich Trial’s 1909 edition. In fact they’d be conspicuous by any absence, because for the first time the Trial broke out of German territory from its start in Berlin and headed southeast to Breslau and then to Budapest before turning west through Vienna and Salzburg to finish up in Munich, a distance of 1,143 miles. Such a comprehensive traverse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to attract Austro-Daimler participation.

The Wiener Neustadt company was perhaps being economi-cal with the truth when it said that its three factory team cars “cor-respond rather precisely with the normal touring-car type, except that the engine was dimensioned rather larger and thus also develops more power. The chassis and body were kept somewhat

lighter than usual.” Here was a hint that the entries were merely tuned versions of Austro-Daimler’s 4.5-liter 28/32. In fact their body designs were not so radical as those of some of the contend-ers of 1908 and 1909, but under their hoods was cylinder capacity increased by a whopping 42 percent.

Staying within the Trial’s taxable-horsepower formula that was heavily dependent on cylinder-bore diameter, Porsche fashioned a four-cylinder engine of 115 x 154 mm for 6,398 cc. It kept the separate two-cylinder blocks and T-head configuration of the Maja with inlet ports on the right and exhausts on the left, fitted with valves of equal diameter. A Bosch magneto was along the block’s left flank, underneath four individual exhaust pipes curving downward. This was Porsche’s first use of this exhaust-tuning technique, which he was to employ successfully on his later competition cars. His single updraft carburetor was on the right-hand side. The big four’s output exceeded 60 bhp to permit the team cars to reach 73 mph and cruise comfortably at 50–55 mph.

Although Porsche retained chain drive for two cars, he intro-duced shaft drive for the third. All kept ten-spoke artillery wheels with rear-wheel brakes only. While open four-seated touring-car coachwork by Jacob Lohner & Co. was conventional, meeting the dimensional requirements laid down by the regulations, the scuttles shielding the cockpit were unusually deep and given added-on cowls that reduced drag and further protected the occupants.

2. The pedant may with justice complain that this should be either Prinz Heinrich or Prince Henry. The author prefers this hermaphroditic version.

LEFT: Entries by Austro-Daimler in the 1909 Prince Heinrich contest were virtually mandated by its route, which passed through Austria-Hungary’s capital cities on its way from Berlin to Munich. His participation was a valuable learning experience for Ferdinand Porsche.

FACING PAGE: Fitted with a so-called “American top,” Austro-Daimler’s 1909 Prince Heinrich entries were powered by new 6.4-liter T-head fours. This chain-drive car showed the deeper cowl fairing that was the main body-shape difference from touring-car coachwork. Porsche was to rue not having more radical bodies. He would not make the same mistake in 1910.

147

Unlike some of the more radical entries, said one report, the Austro-Daimlers “gave the impression of touring cars that were comfortable albeit built for lightness. Soon after their arrival in Munich interested parties asked Director Fischer whether cars of this type could be delivered with the same type of body.” As noted in Chapter 5, in 1911 their desires were satisfied by introduction of the 6.9-liter 27/60.

A star-studded field of 108 cars took the start in Berlin for the Prince Heinrich, held from June 10 to 18, 1909. Wilhelm and Ludwig Opel drove Opels and Ettore Bugatti a Deutz. August Horch passengered in a Horch. The three Austro-Daimlers, handled by Eduard Fischer, Ferdinand Porsche and Count Hugo Boos-Waldeck, faced serried ranks of Opels, Benzes and Mercedes.

Messrs. Porsche and Fischer won praise in the competition as “bold and skilful drivers.” They distinguished themselves in the final speed event, a time trial in Munich’s Forstenrieder Park. Tackling a tricky curve, said one witness, “the first cars through weren’t particularly exciting. Some of their drivers had reserva-tions about taking this dangerous corner flat out. The story took on a bit more life when the two Viennese, Director Fischer and

Porsche, passed the bend at almost undiminished speed. It’s a shame that the two cars weren’t faster. Their two drivers would really have deserved awards.”

Under a handicap system that favored smaller cars, Opel won 1909’s Prince Heinrich Trial with a Mercedes second and another Opel third. Although all three Austro-Daimlers completed the demanding tour intact and with no loss of marks, none placed in the top dozen. Best placed among them was Fischer, who received a special prize from the Austrian Automobile Club. The cars’ reliability spoke well for the qualities that touring-car buyers look for, said Fischer, who found “the competition in fact a challenging test, and we can rightly be proud that our three cars finished 100 percent.”

Afterward, independent observers noted that the results were heavily biased by the results of the speed tests, one of which carried a doubled points weighting and was used as a tie-breaker among cars with similar points totals. Wielding his slide rule during the grand banquet for the winners in Munich, his brain whirring with future solutions, Ferdinand Porsche had grasped the need for speed. He began outlining his car for 1910 before 1909’s engines had cooled.

148

BELOW: Ferdinand Porsche transformed his 1910 contenders for Prince Heinrich honors from bloodhounds to greyhounds, slim and spare in sharp contrast to his 1909 entries. With a flat radiator, this was one of the first cars completed.

FACING PAGE (top): This plan view of the series-built Austro-Daimler 22/86 depicted the narrowness of the frame that was adopted to help reduce the car’s aerodynamic drag. Also visible is its live rear axle with the transverse division of its steel housing that was a Porsche design attribute.

FACING PAGE (bottom): A profile view of the production version of the 22/86 Austro-Daimler showed the height of its engine, a byproduct of the long-stroke design adopted to exploit the Prince Heinrich rules. Two large foot-operated brakes were just forward of the universal joint and pivot of the rear axle’s torque tube.

149

150

“To win such a competition,” Porsche said afterward, “I thought it would be enough to send in a robust, fast touring car. But in this Prince Heinrich Trial I learned something important, namely that a victory is only possible if one exploits every opportunity of the regulations to the fullest and, so to speak, builds a ‘refined’ vehicle. Now that’s no trick for me, as I’ll prove in 1910.”

FERDINAND PORSCHE BUILT HIS 1910 CAR on the 1909 chassis, which proved its merits in that year’s Trial. Although narrowed on the three team cars, the frame was little changed. The forged I-section front axle was given a gentle curve instead of 1909’s more anti-quated double drop. Brakes were still on the rear wheels only, now behind quick-detachable Rudge wire wheels. A hand lever applied the wheel brakes, while separate foot pedals brought contracting-band brakes into action on the shafts from the gearbox to the left and right chain-drive sprockets. Separate left and right pedals allowed braking of a spinning drive wheel, a manual form of limited-slip differential.

The four-speed transmission, said the designer, “is the normal gearbox for the 28/32 hp Austro-Daimler. There is no difference

whatsoever. For the clutch I used both the steel-disc clutch and the spring-band clutch as well. Both systems are good. For a good driver, the spring-band clutch is perhaps a little better than the multi-disc clutch. But the latter can be treated more harshly.” The spring-band or scroll clutch was used in the three cars of the official team.

Although live rear axles were increasingly being used in the industry, Porsche chose chain drive. It had several benefits. Roadholding was better, thanks to better suspension geometry, much lower unsprung weight and the absence of torque reactions. Overall weight was lower as well. Further, it was a snap to change final-drive ratios with different sprocket sizes to adapt the car to changing circumstances. “One special feature of my chain drive,” Porsche explained in an AAZ article, “is the automatic lubrication system, which to my knowledge isn’t used elsewhere. A pipe runs from the lubricator to the drive sprocket of the chain. The pipe ends close to this sprocket, so that oil trickles from within onto the chain. As a result of centrifugal force the oil is then sprayed outward, and thus is forced into the links of the chain.”

Porsche’s big changes were under the hood. Ingeniously, he helped his handicap chances by using a smaller cylinder bore

151

than he had in 1909, 105 instead of 115 mm, thus reducing his engine’s taxable-horsepower rating. “Under the Prince Heinrich formula,” Porsche told AAZ, “the engine I built had 20 [taxable] horsepower. If I’d wanted to, I could have gone up to 26 hp. But I didn’t do that for quite specific reasons, although I can rule out the possibility that a more powerful car would have had a better chance of winning. As the power of a car increases, the difficulty of driving it at maximum power also increases.

“Also,” Porsche added, “I didn’t know the course in detail. If, for example, there’s a curve somewhere in the course, a powerful car must be powered down before it and even braked. Its actual full performance capabilities will exceed those that can be deployed

in the race. The driver of a less powerful car, on the other hand, will be able to take the curve at full speed and he’ll achieve a relatively better time.”3

Ferdinand Porsche married his 105 mm bore with the longest stroke allowable under the rules, 60 mm greater than the bore, or 165 mm. The resulting capacity was 5,715 cc. This was larger than the 4.5 liters of the Mercedes but decisively smaller than the 7.3 liters of the Benzes and 6.3 liters of the Berliets.

PAGE PRECEDING COLOR FOLD-OUT: A front view of one of the flat-radiator 1910 Austro-Daimlers showed the care taken with its aerodynamics: faired running gear, separation of the fenders from the body to reduce frontal area and headlamps meeting only the letter of the law.

RIGHT: An overhead view of the 1910 curved-radiator Austro-Daimler for the Prince Heinrich contest revealed its wind-cheating bodywork with separated fenders and faired suspension parts. Even the acetylene tank for the headlamps was given a low-drag shape.

3. Although when he laid down the basic design Porsche didn’t know the course in detail, he did reconnoiter it before the actual event. He passed on valuable course guidance to all Austro-Daimler drivers.

152

Having chosen relatively modest cylinder dimensions, Porsche’s challenge was to build an engine that would deliver ex-ceptional performance for its size. That was the only way to beat the bogey times that the organizers established for each level of taxable horsepower in the Trial’s speed tests. Two such tests would be held in the 1910 run, one on a 3.4-mile stretch at Genthin, soon after the departure from Berlin on June 2. Competitors headed west to Braunschweig and then south to Kassel and Nuremberg. From there they turned west toward Stuttgart and Strasbourg, after which a second speed test was held at Heiligkreuz south of Colmar. The final legs went north again through Metz to Homburg, close to Frankfurt. Entirely in Germany, the route was longer than the year before at 1,208 miles.

The bald facts of the design that Ferdinand Porsche chose for his 1910 car’s all-new engine are straightforward enough. It used a shaft-driven single overhead camshaft to open inclined overhead valves, in hemispherical combustion chambers, through rocker arms. But this was a quantum leap in the engineer’s technology. Nothing in Porsche’s previous work suggested that such a solution would or could be on his agenda. Although he was also working on aviation engines at the time, some of which had overhead valves, none of them had overhead camshafts.4 Examples of such engines were already in existence, however, and some of them not all that far from Wiener Neustadt.

CREDIT FOR THE FIRST USE of an overhead camshaft in a car engine belongs to the Maudslay brothers, whose eponymous three-cylinder overhead-cam car was introduced in 1902. Designed by Alexander Craig and produced in Coventry, it used a vertical

shaft and worm gears to drive its camshaft, which opened the exhaust valves through rocker arms. In 1903 the inlet valves were added to its repertoire. Maudslay later built both two- and six-cylinder versions.

Nineteen-ought-three also saw the completion by Daimler in Cannstatt of a marine engine with features specified by Russian-born Boris Loutzky. Working in Nuremberg in 1896, Loutzky had helped develop a vertical single-cylinder engine with valves operated by cams at the head, driven by a vertical shaft. Now the six designed for him by Wilhelm Maybach and built by Daimler had a combustion chamber shaped like a truncated cone, with its inlet valve vertical at the top and its exhaust valve on the left side at a 70-degree angle from the vertical. Between their stems Maybach placed a single camshaft that opened the valves through rocker arms that had small rollers at both ends.

Meanwhile in far-away America other engineers were building power units of remarkably advanced design. In 1903 work began in Indianapolis on a racing car commissioned by entrepreneur and auto fanatic Carl G. Fisher. Intended to compete in the first Vanderbilt Cup race of 1904, it was designed by George Weidely and built by the Premier Motor Company. “I want it to be the fastest damn race car in the world” was Fisher’s succinct instruc-tion to Weidely.

THIS PAGE: With a relatively small bore and long stroke to take full advantage of the Prince Heinrich regulations, Porsche’s engine for his 1910 contender was a pure racing four with an overhead camshaft and inclined valves. The fan, unusual on a competition engine, was essential to cool the exhaust valves in their finned cages.

4. Reports at the time and later stated that the 1910 Prince Heinrich Austro-Daimler engine was itself also an aero engine or was derived from one. Porsche himself asserted this immediately after the Trial, when he said, “My car has an engine that has not only operated on earth, it has also already flown in the air, and it’s the same engine that’s used in the Etrich monoplane, with which the Austrian aviator Illner has flown so successfully.” The aero engines are discussed in Chapter 8.

153

The result was an air-cooled four with individual cylinders measuring 177.8 x 152.4 mm for a total of 15,136 cc. Integrated with the car’s frame, the Premier’s rods and crankshaft flailed in the open air with total-loss oiling. Most strikingly, George Weidely fitted the four with a single overhead camshaft driven by a shaft and bevel gears at the front. Valves inclined at a 60-degree included angle were closed by dual coil springs and opened by long rocker arms, pivoted on a shaft above the camshaft. At the cam-lobe end, each rocker arm was roller-tipped. Completed in 1904, the Premier Special proved too heavy to contest the Van-derbilt Cup race. However, it marked a striking step forward in overhead-cam-engine design.

Other American experimenters had similar ideas. In 1901 the Welch brothers of Pontiac, Michigan, used hemispherical chambers fed by two automatic inlet valves and exhausted by a

single pushrod-operated exhaust valve in their first twin-cylinder engine. In February 1904 the Welches introduced a vertical four-cylinder engine with two overhead valves at a 90-degree included angle, opened through high-leverage rocker arms from a single central camshaft. Its drive came up the front of the engine, from a five-bearing crankshaft, through a shaft and bevel gears.

Production of Welch cars began in earnest in 1905, when elder brother Allie R. Welch obtained a patent on his design that was published widely in engineering magazines. Running in five main bearings, the 1906 Welch four measured 117.5 x 127 mm for 5,508 cc and developed 50 bhp at 1,250 rpm. In 1910 the Welch Motor Car Company was subsumed into the expanding General Motors empire and soon superseded as a brand.

Late in 1907 the Jackson Automobile Company of Jackson, Michigan, introduced its Model E, a dramatic advance over its

RIGHT: As installed in an early flat-radiator chassis for the 1910 Prince Heinrich, the Austro-Daimler’s 5.7-liter engine was packed into the available hood space. Its unusual elevated valve springs were clearly visible, an advantage being that any breakage could be quickly spotted and remedied. Not all the ten entries used this elaborate inlet manifold.

154

ABOVE: Alexander Craig’s 1902 triple-cylinder design for Maudslay had overhead-camshaft operation of its exhaust valves and automatic inlets. A vertical shaft and worm gears drove the camshaft in this pioneering use of an overhead cam.

LEFT: In his 1902 design of a large marine engine for Boris Loutzky, Wilhelm Maybach fitted a single overhead camshaft operating vertical inlet valves and angled exhausts through rocker arms. It was the first engine design of this genre.

BELOW: Although unlikely to have inspired Fedinand Porsche, George Weidley’s 1904 creation for Premier in Indianapolis topped its 15.1-liter capacity with a shaft-driven overhead camshaft and vee-inclined valves. Porsche would devise a more compact rocker-arm layout.

155

ABOVE: In America the Welch brothers were authentic pioneers of vee-inclined valves operated by a shaft-driven overhead cam and rocker arms. Such four-cylinder Welch engines were produced from 1905 and their details widely published in engineering journals at the time.

RIGHT: Built with two-cylinder blocks on a common crankcase, the 1906 Welch produced 50 bhp from 5.5 liters. Its overhead cam and rocker arms were entirely exposed in the manner of the day. The Welch brothers used smoothly sophisticated exhaust piping.

BELOW: The 3.3-liter four designed for Nesselsdorf by Hans Ledwinka appeared as its Model S in 1907. Its single overhead camshaft and vee-inclined valves were advanced features certain to have been noticed by Porsche before he designed his 1910 Prince Heinrich contender.

156

ABOVE: By the standards of 1910 the Prince Heinrich Austro-Daimler was the epitome of low-drag design. A leather strap kept its engine crank from swinging wildly.

LEFT: Under the floorboards this transaxle delivered torque to lateral shafts and sprockets from which chains drove the rear wheels of the 1910 Prince Heinrich Austro-Daimler. Each shaft could be braked by a contracting band.

FACING PAGE: With Ferdinand Porsche at the wheel and a full passenger complement to simulate racing conditions, one of the 1910 Prince Heinrich cars was put through its paces on the Neunkirschner Allee during tests before the Prince Heinrich tour.

157

usual flat twins. Designed by Byron F. Carter, its five-bearing four-cylinder engine had a single overhead camshaft operating inclined overhead valves through pairs of roller-tipped rocker arms whose pivots were neatly encased. Both inlet manifolding on the right and exhaust on the left were smooth, clean designs.

By 1910 Jackson was making its overhead-cam engines in three different sizes, the two largest having vertical-shaft drive at the front of the engine and the smallest a chain drive at the rear. Looking eminently well-suited to high-speed power production, three Jacksons were entered in the first Indianapolis 500-mile race of 1911. One, the largest with a 9.2-liter four, placed 10th. Jackson failed to regain pace after the war and faded away after 1923.5

MUCH CLOSER TO HOME for Ferdinand Porsche was an engine designed by a fellow Austrian. In 1878, three years after Porsche, Hans Ledwinka was born in Klosterneuburg on the Danube a few miles northwest of Vienna. Ledwinka trained in the mechanical arts in the workshop of an uncle and also in a Vienna trade school before moving to Nesselsdorf in eastern Moravia in 1897 at the age of 19 to take up work there in a leading maker of railway carriages that was just taking an interest in the car business. In this respect the well-known company, named after the town, had much in common with the standing and role of Lohner when Porsche joined it.

Again like Porsche, Ledwinka was active in the creation of Nesselsdorf’s first autos, based on Benz designs. For Theodor von Liebieg, who later backed the founding of RAF in Reichenberg, he built a special racing car in 1900. Ledwinka had been in charge of the company’s auto designs when he left the firm in the autumn of 1902 to pursue a steam-car project. He returned to Nesselsdorf at the end of 1905 to resume guidance of the company’s car activi-ties at the age of 27. After doing his best to salvage the indiffer-ent designs he found, the engineer launched a crash program to design a completely new car with the help of a young draftsman, Antonin Klicka. By the end of 1906 he had completed the design of his new Nesselsdorf, the Model S.

This was a car on which the company’s future depended—Nesselsdorf was contemplating quitting the car field—so Hans Ledwinka pulled out all the stops. Like Porsche almost contem-poraneously, he used a radical gearbox, a so-called “bell” design that engaged its gears in an unusual way. But the Model S’s crown jewel was its engine, an in-line four cast in two blocks of two measuring 90 x 130 mm for 3,308 cc. Bevel gears and a vertical

5. Welch and Jackson were only the most prominent among the American makers of single-overhead-cam fours in the first decade of the twentieth century. Trebert of Rochester, New York, offered proprietary engines of this design, while in 1907 Tincher of South Bend, Indiana produced a costly chain-drive automobile of this configuration with valves that were vertical rather than inclined.

158

shaft at the front drove a single overhead camshaft that opened overhead valves through rocker arms. Inclined at an included angle of 90 degrees, inlets were on the right and exhausts on the left. A transverse shaft, also at the front, drove a water pump on the left and magneto on the right.

Combining as it did some of the most advanced features of the day, Hans Ledwinka’s Model S was a technical tour de force. Three ball bearings carried its crankshaft in an aluminum crankcase with twin circular access ports that would become a Ledwinka trademark. Rated at 30 bhp at 2,200 rpm, the new engine gave birth to a 5.0-liter six as well, a handsome engine that in 1910 was credited with 50 bhp at 2,600 rpm.6 Both types remained in production to World War I. They gained a sister, the 45-bhp Nesselsdorf Model T, in which all four cylinders shared a single block and the valve gear was fully enclosed.

In the automotive world of Austro-Hungary, Porsche and Ledwinka were well-acquainted. Their paths crossed at suppliers, shows and sporting events. Among the entrants in 1907’s Semmering Hillclimb, gathering place for Europe’s automotive nobility, was Ledwinka in a Nesselsdorf. The innovations of his new Model S, said one historian, “made it a hit at the Vienna Auto Salon.” We can be confident that Ferdinand Porsche was well-acquainted with the technology that Ledwinka had synthesized so well.

At Mlada Boleslav, halfway between Maffersdorf and Prague, another advanced prototype had matured by 1909. After helping launch RAF in Reichenberg, the talented Otto Hieronimus—1906 Pötting Prize winner—moved to Laurin & Klement in 1908. For the Mlada Boleslav firm he developed several racing cars, including the four-cylinder FCR of 1909 with 5,675 cc from the extreme di-mensions of 85 x 250 mm. He topped its two cylinder blocks with vee-inclined valves at an included angle of 120 degrees, opened by a shaft-driven overhead camshaft. The two FCRs Hieronimus made were active competitors at Semmering and elsewhere.

THUS FERDINAND PORSCHE had a small but well-defined cache of suitable solutions at his disposal when he mulled over ways to increase the specific power of his 1910 Prince Heinrich engine. They pointed unerringly to inclined overhead valves in a compact combustion chamber. “Why the valves need to be set in the cylinder head is no longer a mystery,” said Porsche. “We do it to reduce as far as possible the dead volume”—the space that remains

6. One driven by Ledwinka, two of the sixes competed in 1911’s Alpine Trial against Porsche’s 14/32 Austro-Daimlers.

159

FACING PAGE AND BELOW:This phalanx of seven Austro-Daimlers for the 1910 Prince Heinrich contest represented the fruits of an incredibly intense year of researching, designing, testing and construction following the indifferent result of 1909. In all, ten of the new cars took the start.

160

above the piston at top dead center. This was another way of saying that the layout encouraged a higher compression ratio than the T-head or L-head chambers with their “dead volume” sprawling out at the sides to house the valves. As in Ledwinka’s Model S, the Austro-Daimler’s two valves per cylinder—a generous 71 mm in diameter—were equally disposed at a 100-degree included angle.

Next was the question of valve actuation. Porsche could have used pushrods and rocker arms, in the manner of Pipe, Benz, Fiat and others, and as he did in his own aviation engines. For his new Austro-Daimler, however, he chose a single overhead camshaft driven by a vertical shaft and bevel gears at the front of the engine. This was heavier than the pushrod alternative, but weight was less a concern in a car than in an airplane. The valves were opened by short and light rocker arms, roller-tipped where they contacted the cam lobes, that gave the small multiplication ratio of 1:1.11. In this way, said Porsche, “we gain an advantage because the recip-rocating parts are kept as small as possible.”

Each rocker arm had a wide-based pivot at the periphery of the central aluminum housing that contained the camshaft. To keep his engine’s profile as low and compact as possible Ferdinand Porsche innovated in its rocker-arm layout. If he’d placed the rockers above the valve stems pushing them down, like Welch and Nesselsdorf, he’d have had to use long rocker arms and a high-placed camshaft. Instead he forked the valve end of the rocker arm so it could push down a collar, integral with the stem just above the valve guide, to open the valve. Thus each valve’s coil spring protruded outward, reacting against an abutment bolted to the head to close the valve. In addition to

compactness this had the merit of giving better cooling to the spring and thus to the valve.7

Each valve seated in a cage, also serving as a stub port, which was clamped into position in the non-detachable cylinder head by a large screwed-in toothed ring. Removing these port cages was the normal manner of extracting the engine’s valves. Each cage and port was isolated from the coolant, which circulated around it but not through it. “I willingly admit that this was the biggest risk in the whole design,” said Ferdinand Porsche. “At the beginning of the Trial it aroused much headshaking among the German competitors.

“I only decided in favor of it,” the designer added, “because otherwise removing the valves is very difficult. If we had also wanted to make the valve stem water-cooled, the cooling water would be lost when the valve is removed.” Each valve seat wasn’t “directly connected to the water cavities; it has what you might call contact cooling. This type of cooling proved to be totally satisfactory.” The exhaust-valve cages and their adjacent ports were heavily finned for cooling. To ensure an ample draft, Porsche supplemented his usual flywheel fan with an additional fan behind the radiator that was belt-driven at faster than engine speed from the nose of the camshaft.

Bevel gears from the vertical shaft drove two Bosch magnetos at the front of the engine, each angled gently to the rear. This provided dual ignition, adopted not for performance but for

LEFT: Entirely witin the borders of Imperial Germany, the route of the 1910 Prince Heinrich trial was expected to favor the many entries from domestic auto makers. Foreign teams from such as Fiat, Vauxhall, Puch and Austro-Daimler were expected to struggle.

FACING PAGE: The best-known image from the 1910 Prince Heinrich competition showed Porsche pressing on with his characteristic air of confidence and behind him a well-shrouded Louise. His mount’s tiny headlamps are reversed to offer the absolute minimum of drag.

7. Opel would copy this distinctive valve gear for the four-valve heads of its four-cylinder 1914 Grand Prix car. Albeit with pushrods, Vincent would use a similar layout for some of its motorcycle engines.

161

security.8 The two plugs were athwart the inlet valves. “To be sure, the operational reliability of modern ignition systems is such that it would have been the most unusual of coincidences if an Austro-Daimler had broken down because of an ignition fault,” the designer avowed. “Both were in operation, but spot checks were made now and then. One of them was switched off and the other checked, and then vice versa. Otherwise it was possible that one of them had failed. We would then perhaps have continued with the other one in operation until it too failed. Although such an event is improbable, in this world anything can happen.”

Also driven at the front was a single water pump, placed at the bottom of the cam-drive tower. It delivered water to a manifold along the left, exhaust side of the engine, from which warmed coolant was also extracted next to the exhaust valves. The three factory team cars had sharply veed honeycomb radiators that combined maximum cooling area with minimum frontal area. Two of the seven privateered Austro-Daimler entries, all of which had the new engine, had rounded radiators while the rest were flat.

Coolant manifolding to and from the cylinders was needed because each was an individual iron casting. Although seemingly a retrograde step from more modern en bloc engines, Porsche chose separate cylinders “because then I can mount the crankshaft in a much better way. Mounting plays an important role in engines with high rpm.” The added spacing between cylinders left ample room for five main bearings to support the crankshaft fully. Caps for the front and rear mains were integral with the aluminum oil pan, while separate caps were provided for the remaining three. All the bearings had bronze shells with babbitted bearing surfaces.

Machined from a steel billet, the crankshaft was bereft of counterbalancing. Pistons were thin-wall steel, attached to I-section connecting rods with four-bolt big ends. Lubrication of the babbitted big ends was by scoops in their caps, picking up oil from troughs in the sump. Fresh oil was fed to key parts of

8. One of the magnetos was fitted with twin points for a battery-powered ignition system that was used to assist starting. Had the engine been used for aviation, dual ignition would have been essential.

162

LEFT: Count Georg Orssich relied on his front-seat partner to honk the horn during his drive to 49th place in the 1910 Prince Heinrich contest. His Austro-Daimler was fitted with an experimental radiator with forward-facing curvature.

BELOW: Unable to start the second day of the 1910 Prince Heinrich on time, Hungarian Eugen von Baruch’s Austro-Daimler was disqualified. Nevertheless he loyally carried on to finish the complete route so that Wiener Neustadt could claim finishes by all its cars.

FACING PAGE: Among the privateers piloting Austro-Daimlers in the 1910 Prince Heinrich tour was H. C. Hanson. Penalized for a leaking water pipe, he placed 59th for the poorest official result of the cars from Wiener Neustadt.

163

164

the engine from a reservoir by Porsche’s favored Friedmann multi-plunger pump. Although seemingly more primitive than full-pressure oiling systems, this had the merit of constantly de-livering fresh, clean oil. Given the state of the art at the time, Porsche preferred this to systems that recirculated oil that might contain damaging debris.

Separate pipes on the exhaust side entered an expansion chamber from which a single pipe took exhaust gases to the rear. Screw couplings clamped them to the exhaust ports, similar to

the couplings used to attach the inlet manifold. The latter was optimal in design, giving perfect mixture distribution through two branches debouching into two more for the front and rear cylinder pairs. An alternative simpler manifold, more akin to a simple log design, was fitted to some of the engines. Where mixture entered the manifold it was warmed by a water jacket. This was needed, said Porsche, “to prevent the carburetor from freezing.”

Anti-icing provisions apart, Ferdinand Porsche aimed for his cars to ingest the coolest possible air. “By drawing in cold air,” he

165

said, “it is possible to induce a larger quantity of explosive mixture into the chamber than is the case with warm-air induction.” Made as part of the inlet manifold was Porsche’s own compact single-jet carburetor, whose mixture strength was adjusted by a leather diaphragm that controlled an air valve in response to manifold vacuum. Otherwise all its settings were either built into the instru-ment or adjusted by changing spring pressures.9 After an initial pump-up, exhaust-gas pressure from one of the cylinders forced gasoline from the tank to the carburetor.

With its large valves the engine’s cam timing didn’t need to be radical; an avoidance of overlap assured sufficient pulling power. Porsche tailored it to give good flexibility through its range to a maximum of 2,300 rpm with peak torque of 238 lb-ft at 2,000 rpm. At 1,000 rpm it was already developing 32 bhp and 168 lb-ft of torque. It produced 86 bhp at 1,900 and reached its maximum output of 95 bhp at 2,100 rpm. This was exceptional specific power for 1910, indeed one of the highest, if not the highest, power levels per liter yet attained by any engine. Yet it was achieved without fuss or fury for a car designed to cope with the requirements of a demanding road rally.

Arrowing southwest from Wiener Neustadt, paralleling the railroad, a dead-straight road ran for 8 miles toward the town of Neunkirchen. This, the Neunkirchner Allee, was Ferdinand Porsche’s high-speed test track. When he took his first completed 1910 Prince Heinrich prototype there in April he clocked it at 80 mph, not at all a mean pace for a touring car. Friendly as he was with the aviators at a nearby airfield, Porsche invited one of them along to his tests. Igo Etrich was already famed for early flights in his Taube, or Pigeon; in February he had just moved his operations to the flat, open Steinfeld northwest of Wiener Neustadt. Etrich and Porsche were beginning to cooperate in the air. Now the Austro-Daimler engineer asked for his advice on land.

Etrich passengered in a speed run on the Neunkirchner Allee. “After our test Porsche asked for my opinion,” he wrote. “I told him that the engine was very good, but the body shape was wrong, because the car drew heavy air turbulence behind it that reduced its speed. I added that if I’d given the tail of my Taube a similar shape, my airplane wouldn’t have managed even a hop. I recom-mended that he give the car’s tail a metal enclosure, as an experi-ment, which would provide a more favorable airflow at departure. Thereafter the car was given streamlined-shape bodywork with the result that the engine revved over the allowable speed limit, demanding a change in the final-drive ratio.”10

This was an excellent result. The Neunkirchner Allee had become Porsche’s wind tunnel as well as his test track. “We cannot imagine how much power must be used to overcome air resis-tance,” he had discovered. “According to my calculations, on cars with the power and velocity of the Austro-Daimler no less than 60 to 65 bhp is required to overcome air resistance.” This was his finding after he’d addressed the aerodynamics of his 1910 Prince Heinrich contenders.

Porsche credited many detail refinements with a top-speed improvement of 6 mph. These included the shrouding of many components exposed to the wind. “The front axle, the lamp struts, the muffler—all of these components are in fish-form,” he explained. He could have added the fender struts, the rear axle and the acetylene generator. “This means that their front edge

9. In order to obtain the optimum carburetor settings for the Prince Heinrich Trial, Porsche arranged to have samples of the event’s official fuel sent to Wiener Neustadt so it could be used in the final dynamometer tests.

10. Many accounts credit Ernst Neumann-Neander, who although older than Porsche shared a birth date with him, with the design of the car’s body. A drawing exists but it does not resemble the completed body and crucially lacks the pointed tail that was Etrich’s contribution. We can conclude that the final design was chiefly influenced by Igo Etrich.

166

has a wider, rounded form that then tails off sharply at the rear. Initially this shape seems illogical, but even so it is what I found in my trials. It makes a great difference whether you choose this fish-shape or—as many designers do—you give the car sharp edges which cut through the air. This may seem more logical, but it is not such an advantage in the end. On fish-shape components the air is compressed, and then when it flows back together again, it pushes the car forward, as it were.”

Ferdinand Porsche was not the only designer who brought cars to the start in Berlin that professed to offer less wind resistance. The Brennabors were bullet-shaped, the Mercedes dart-shaped and the Benzes exceptionally clean with cowled radiators, disc covers for their wheels and a tapered tail akin to that recommended by Igo Etrich. Many adopted a “tulip” shape for the body, which was wide at the top to meet the Trial’s mandatory dimensions but narrow, curving down to the frame rails, to reduce frontal area.

PREVIOUS PAGE: Another entry roared by as Count Schönfeld’s crew changed a right rear tire during the 1910 Prince Heinrich tour. Heinrich Schönfeld was a staunch ally of the efforts of Fischer and Porsche and no mean competitor behind the wheel.

LEFT: Severin Schreiber, manager of Austro-Daimler’s new sales branch in Vienna, placed 33rd in the 1910 Prince Heinrich with his flat-radiator model. It benefitted from the full fairing of its axles.

BELOW: In a white vee-radiator factory car that was close kin to the winner’s, Count Heinrich Schönfeld drove to a worthy third place in the 1910 Prince Heinrich, completing Austro-Daimler’s sweep of the top three positions.

167

ABOVE: Porsche ensured that this red Austro-Daimler of his Managing Director lacked nothing in the hunt for victory in the 1910 Prince Heinrich trial. Eduard Fischer, however, was happy to see the win go to the man who’d worked so hard to achieve it.

RIGHT: Some of the Austro-Daimlers in the 1910 Prince Heinrich had this simpler log-type inlet manifold. This was the style chosen for later production of the commercially marketed version of Porsche’s victorious 5.7-liter four.

168

169

LEFT: The Austrian heroes of the 1910 Prince Heinrich contest were pictured with their loot. Seated from left were Count Schönfeld, Ferdinand Porsche and Eduard Fischer. Those standing from left were other team members Doctor Grohmann, Count B. Schönfeld, H. C. Hanson, F. Schreiber, Major von Bolzano, Doctor Havak, Lieutenant Schuster, C. C. Friese, Severin Schreiber and Benno Brauda.

170

171

LEFT: Porsche’s laurel-bedecked Austro-Daimler posed in front of Bad Homburg’s Savoy Hotel at the end of a hard-fought Prince Heinrich tour. Aloisia was behind him, next to the official observer, while his injured chauffeur was ballast in the front. Behind him was the red second-place car of Eduard Fischer.

172

This was emphasized in Wiener Neustadt’s three factory team cars by giving them a narrower chassis frame, 27.6 inches wide. All the Austro-Daimlers rode on a 120.3-inch wheelbase.

In their basic “tulip” body form, constructed as the previous year by Jacob Lohner & Co., the Austro-Daimlers resembled some of their rivals. None, however, was fashioned with Porsche’s fanatical attention to detail. Etrich’s suggestion of a tapering tail was adopted to very good effect on the official team cars. Porsche’s fish-form fairing of wind-blasted components was unique. “I have even gone so far as to shroud every single nut on the fenders so the air has nothing to catch on,” the designer confessed. He also fitted a full undershield and fairings for the Hartford friction shock absorbers and the chain sprockets.

The special features of the three works cars were kept under wraps until the last minute. In mid-May a test was organized on the Neunkirchner Allee for some of the talented amateurs who, it was hoped, would acquire cars to drive in the Trial. Two flat-radiator models were brought, one of them the car that had been pictured in early photos that purported to show Austro-Daimler’s contender. The company’s first-ranked cars, with their veed radiators and tapering tails, gave a sensationally

more intense impression. And that was before their hoods were opened to display engines that were at the cutting edge of 1910’s technology.

AMONG THOSE TIPPED FOR SUCCESS in the third Prince Heinrich were Benz, the previous year’s winners with spectacular new cars, and Opel, winner of the first Prince Heinrich, with 20 cars among the starters including the only entry piloted by a woman, Lilli Sternberg. Racing drivers Willy Pöge and Camille Jenatzy were stars of the Mercedes team, while the international scope of the event was shown by entries from Vauxhall, Mathis, Fiat, Berliet and Bugatti—with Ettore himself at the wheel. As Ferdinand Porsche relates in this chapter’s sidebar, however, his Austro-Daimlers im-mediately impressed with their immaculate readiness.

Fischer and Porsche were successful in attracting customers for their exciting new cars. In addition to the three team cars, seven more took the start. One was handled by a Hungarian, Eugen von Baruch. At the first stop in Braunschweig he had to make heavy repairs that kept him from starting on time the next day. This meant disqualification. With his car sorted, however, von

173

FACING PAGE: Much as onlookers would gather to admire a Ferrari or Lamborghini today, these Londoners paused to inspect one of the fastest road cars of 1911, a production-model Austro-Daimler 22/80 based on the successful Prince Heinrich racing cars of 1910.

RIGHT: The title page of Vienna’s AAZon June 19, 1910, showed justified pride in a great triumph of Austrian technology in the heart of Germany. Porsche had pride of place with Eduard Fischer at left and Count Schönfeld at right. The “Iron Team” was born.

BELOW: This plan view purports to show the layout that Ferdinand Porsche might have used had Austro-Daimler chosen to tackle the Prince Heinrich again in 1911. Though possibly apocryphal, its radical “sidecar” design could well have conformed with the rules while giving an unbeatable aerodynamic advantage.

174

Baruch carried on and completed the run unofficially. Another Austro-Daimler, that of Robert Voight, was driven by Düsseldorf’s Benno Brauda. It fell out of competition with a seized clutch—the sensitivity of the scroll clutch of which Porsche spoke—but Brauda bravely drove to the finish by shifting without the clutch, aided by the engine’s flexibility.

That left five private cars eligible for awards. They all received plaques commending their completion of the Trial. Of the 86 finishers H. C. Hanson’s car placed the least well, 59th. He’d mis-takenly slowed when a rogue white flag was waved during the first speed test, and later picked up penalty points when a water hose sprung a leak. Forty-ninth place went to another Austro-Daimler, that of Count Georg Orssich. He was the only competitor, he said, to carry five people rather than the mandated four. Egon von Jägermayer placed 41st while 33rd went to Severin Schreiber, manager of Austro-Daimler’s new sales branch in Vienna.

Best placed of all the privateers was the black Austro-Daimler of a Porsche ally of old, Count Siegfried Wimpffen. He engaged an engineer, C. C. Friese, as his driver for the Trial. Friese, who had been Porsche’s dispassionate controller in the 1909 Prince Heinrich, decided to return to the fray in 1910 as a driver. They finished an excellent 12th in a flat-radiator car that had all Porsche’s aerodynamic chassis refinements.

Ferdinand Porsche’s own story, in the sidebar, gives a good sense of the demands of the 1910 Prince Heinrich, in which the biggest risk for the Austro-Daimlers, with their air-cooled exhaust valves, wasn’t going too fast but rather going too slow. In the two time trials a Benz was fastest, 84.5 and 85.8 mph, but performed less well against its specified target time than the Austro-Daimlers of Eduard Fischer, 79.5 mph in the first test, and Ferdinand Porsche, 82 mph in the second. It was Fischer’s desire that, of

the two of them, Porsche should take the lead, and the engineer eagerly responded with excellent pace in the final test.

Another longtime supporter of Ferdinand Porsche’s work, Count Heinrich Schönfeld, was offered the wheel of the third works car, officially the property of Vienna’s Fritz Hamburger. In the first speed test his engine suffered from a misfire, later traced to water in its fuel. Schönfeld praised his mount’s flexibility, saying that he drove for hours at speeds as low as 15 to 20 miles per hour in top gear. He finished third with a good points margin over the fourth-place Opel and a Benz in fifth. The two chief rivals were decisively beaten back.

Count Schönfeld’s team also collected the prize offered by the King of Württemberg, lending substance to the joking comment of Opel’s Fritz Erle, “Do you Austrians really have to come to Germany and take the prizes from us?” Of the 16 prizes on offer, the Austrian cars went home with half.11 Packing them all up for shipment home was no small task.

As the business partners hoped and planned, Eduard Fischer placed second overall to the winner, Ferdinand Porsche. By sweeping the top three places the “Iron Team” put the team prize far out of reach. Although Porsche’s motoring ménage was not the most robust, comprising his wife Aloisia and his injured chauffeur, he made few demands on it during the Trial. He received the prize of the Emperor’s Automobile Club. To rub it in, he also won outright Prince Heinrich’s magnificent perpetual trophy, a

11. Other prizes were awarded for the speed trials. In the first one at Genthin, Eduard Fischer collected Princess Heinrich’s award while Ferdinand Porsche won the prize offered by Princess Charlotte of Sachsen-Meiningen. In the second speed trial near Colmar Porsche’s reward was the prize of the Grand Duke of Hesse while Fischer was honored by the prize of his Excellency the Governor Count von Wedel.

175

FACING PAGE: On the beach at Fanø, Denmark’s answer to Daytona, Ferdinand Porsche took part in speed trials with a two-seater version of the 22/86.

THIS PAGE: Prince Elias of Parma, here a passenger, ordered this magnificent coachwork from Jacob Lohner for his series-built shaft-drive 22/86 Austro-Daimler. With its cycle fenders, tapered tail and huge exhaust pipes it was one of the most stunning sporting cars of its era.

176

What Winner Director Porsche Had to Say

Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung, 19 June 1910

I’m happy to admit it: I made a huge effort with the Austrian Prince Heinrich car. But all that effort wasn’t in vain. It wasn’t easy getting the vehicle ready in time, as I normally have plenty to do. Just before the journey to Berlin I had to attend the first lift-off by the Lebaudy airship in Fischamend, because a first attempt always makes demands on the designer of the engine, even if everything goes well. My car had already been sent to Berlin in advance by rail. On the day before the weigh-in I tested the Lebaudy airship and then had just enough time to rush to the train.

I arrived in Berlin at 8:05 A.M. and then had to be at the weigh-in at 8:40 A.M. I was there in good time and was able, for the first time, to observe the first success of my design: we were feared competitors. They were saying that the Austrian Daimlers did 140 km/h [87 mph]. I think that other competitors were saying that, but in fact they had no idea how near they were to the truth. Toward the end of the second race I did indeed travel at 140 km/h.

Inspection of the car went smoothly. There were no complaints. Everything was perfect. We had kept strictly to the dimensions. After it had been inspected, I made another test run in the Berlin area. Just before departure from Wiener Neustadt I had made a small adjustment to the carburetor which I could only test once I had arrived in Berlin.

On the day before the start I fetched my independent observer, Lieutenant Count Bopp, a nephew of Count Bopp von Oberstadt. He was a strict but impeccable controller, and that was fine with me. I didn’t want any leniency; in such a competition that’s absolutely inadmissible. But I was pleased to have a controller with unquestionable integrity. My wife accompanied me on the whole journey. I also had my chauffeur, Mr. Henschel, with me, although I couldn’t rely on his help, because a little earlier he’d broken his arm. He couldn’t even crank the engine, and I was obliged to carry out all the heavy work for him. But I was happy to do it, because he had conducted himself valiantly on the previous year’s Prince Heinrich trial.

Just beyond Berlin the roads were poor and the cars were very badly shaken in all directions. Whatever wasn’t firmly secured went astray. People said to me that the choice of these roads was a special request of Prince Heinrich of Prussia. He wanted to separate the good vehicles from the poor ones during the first stage. The pace wasn’t very rapid. We had to dawdle so slowly that it was a cause for concern, as our cars were built for speed. It was in fact a very harsh test for the cooling system and the lubrication.

When we reached the race section, the cars were weighed. The Austrian Daimlers were heavy enough and they needed no ballast. I didn’t want to expose my wife to the dangers of the race. She got out at the start and traveled on by train.

The race went well. I drove the car flat out and it went like “greased lightning.” I found the road to be poor; in fact it seemed very bumpy. Remarkably my view didn’t conform with the view of many of the other competitors. They thought that the roads were very good, but then they did find the second flat race poor, whereas I thought it was good.

Both my chauffeur and I kept our times during the race. And after the race I was very disappointed. I thought the distance was only 5 kilometers, and when I calculated the time I found that I had driven miserably. But soon afterward disappointment turned to surprise, when I discovered that the distance was actually 5½ kilometers. My time was excellent. But there was an unpleasant surprise at the end of the stage. Because of a miscalculation some competitors were given a time 10 seconds faster, and according to that I seemed to be third or fourth. Of course that would have been quite good but I did really want to be first and, based on the facts, that didn’t seem impossible. But after the unpleasant surprise came a pleasant one when the calculation error was discovered. To quote Goethe, it was a case of “Longing and anxious in constant anguish.”

The second day took us from Braunschweig to Kassel. This time Prince Heinrich was at the front. He set the pace and as a result it was much more lively. On this day I saw many cars that had broken down, usually with tire failures. The organization was absolutely superb. The spectators formed a guard of honor and we were generally received with great enthusiasm. My car covered this stage without any breakdowns.

The third day was Kassel to Nuremberg. The leading group traveled at an ambling pace that drove me almost to desperation. We didn’t know why we weren’t making good progress. The average speed we’d been promised was approximately 50 km/h [31 mph]. Instead, we were covering only 20 to 25 kilometers per hour [12.5–15.5 mph]. As I said earlier, we didn’t know why that was. Was it the leading guide vehicle or was one of the contestants for some reason going slowly so all those behind were being held up?

I left a considerable interval between myself and the car in front because it can be very harmful for a car to be tailing a cloud of whipped-up dust. The carburetor sucks dust through the valves into the interior of the engine, where it does no good to the cylinder walls or the valves. Some competitors were pushing from behind. They wanted to get in front. I let them pass. Usually it was only those contestants whose cars had suffered faults on the first day, so they were keeping up with the competition albeit without any expectations.

During the journey I followed the underlying principle of almost all serious contestants: to cover the stages from start to finish without a stop. We ate en route, but that’s the usual procedure on such journeys. On the run from Kassel to Nuremburg, chance would have it that I completed the stage precisely with the contents of my gasoline tank. My car came to a standstill beneath the yellow finishing tape in Nuremberg. I had used up the very last drop of gasoline. But in addition to the main reservoir I also had a reserve tank, so I wasn’t embarrassed and suffered no penalties, because the gasoline could be topped up from the containers we carried with us.

The reception in Nuremberg was, as everywhere, grand. The general view was that my prospects were by far the best. We had a rest day in Nuremberg and that did me good, because I was actually very tired going into the competition.

The fourth day covered the section from Nuremberg to Strasbourg. The roads were magnificent. If only the pace had

177

been a little faster. In Stuttgart I tried to find my acquaintances from the Daimler motor company in the crowd, but in vain. I wasn’t able to wave to any of them as I drove by. I really didn’t see them and I didn’t pass by “proudly,” as one of the gentlemen said. In any case, my victory was at this stage still not at all certain.

It was much appreciated that Bosch had set up a food station. In Stuttgart a card was passed to us in the car stating that a basket with food and drink would be given us 20 kilometers farther on−for better ignition! The present was actually a gift from the Bosch company. Herr Bosch was, of course, very interested in the ignition system on my car. I had only the best news for him.

Our route took us through some beautiful sections of the Black Forest. I knew some of the area quite well from a test run that I’d made there. The inclines were considerable, but they didn’t pose the same difficulties for an Austrian used to the mountains as they did to most Germans. Up by Kniebis, the leader brought us to a stop. The cars formed a tailback and then began the most disgraceful dawdle in the world. I made a voluntary stop and started again later, when the air was clear, clear of the dust that almost choked us.

My prospects of victory and my standing with the other competitors rose as we approached the finish. Opel’s Herr Erle said jokingly: “Do you Austrians really have to come to Germany and take the prizes from us?” I was still not at all sure of victory. After all, anything could happen on the long journey ahead. Victory or defeat can depend on something so small. A tiny, insignificant fault to a trivial part—and all is lost. But I was lucky. I had better luck than I could have hoped for.

In the first flat race Director Fischer went faster than me, despite the fact that both vehicles were the same. I put the

difference in speed down to the fact that Director Fischer’s car had a somewhat lower final-drive ratio and, as a headwind was blowing, he was better able to fight it than I. But Director Fischer was a loyal competitor. He explained immediately that he preferred to see me in the lead rather than himself, so I saw to it that I obliged him in this respect. I was faster in the second speed competition than he was. Furthermore, I was also the only competitor who improved his chances there. I finished the second flat race under exactly the same conditions as the first one. Our vehicles were weighed and everything was fine.

I do not really need to emphasize just how badly all the competitors were affected by the terrible accident that occurred on this section. As we all know now Herr Heine, an otherwise good driver, turned his car over and the independent observer and his chauffeur were killed. Heine himself suffered serious injuries. There was plenty of discussion during the Trial and also in the newspapers about the cause of the accident, and it was said that a puncture was to blame. This certainly isn’t true, because all four tires were fully inflated after the accident.

I believe that the cause of the accident was something else. While driving past the stands Herr Heine looked at the spectators to see what impression he was making. That is a failing in very many drivers. As the road was heavily cambered, he left the crown of the road, the car started to skid and in the end he lost control. Many other drivers had complained that the road had too much camber and I believe that at such a speed and in a car with a degree of play in the steering, these circumstances can have a detrimental effect.

I had asked my wife to alight from the car before the race. As fate would have it she was traveling in the train with the wife of the driver, Herr Heine, who was involved in the accident.

Partners in life, Ferdinand and Aloisia Porsche were partners as well in the tests of Austro-Daimlers and even in competitions like the Prince Heinrich and Alpine trials.

178

Frau Heine had been in a most cheerful mood at the time she learned the devastating news about the accident.

I had arranged with Director Fischer that after each race we would stop and tell each other our times. By comparing times, we were easily able to tell that our prospects were extremely good. We were then seen by some other contestants, who stopped immediately. All of them would have liked to know the times recorded by rivals. The other competitors were also willing to pass on information, but they didn’t want to tell the truth. I did things differently. I told them my times and I could tell from their long faces that I had performed significantly better than they had.

So victory was ours—as long as nothing else happened. It is easy to imagine the agreeable position we were in. A secure victory within our grasp and one last stage to go. But a little too much water in the gasoline and all hope of victory would be gone. And this was very likely, because every morning I left the moisture trap, which was full of water, to drain off, and also I always obtained the gasoline in sealed cans. Next year I’ll make the moisture trap five times bigger.

The last section was the toughest. There were some difficult climbs and I saw many good cars parked by the roadside with a serious defect of one kind or another. It happened quite frequently that we saw people gesticulating on mountain sections from a long way off, urging us to drive up to them at speed to their cheers. But I was cautious about doing such things if the section were not clearly visible. In one such incident I drove carefully up to the curve and then after that smartly onwards, which often earned me warm applause. Despite the steep inclines, the first gear on our car was superfluous. I made it up all the hills in second gear. But I’m happy to admit it: this section was about brakes and engine.

We then had a magnificent journey on to Koblenz and then from there we turned on to the Taunus racecourse. I knew the Taunus from the Kaiserpreis. Just before Weilburg, my vehicle developed a tire fault caused by a nail. This didn’t count as a penalty point and was really just a source of amusement for us, as you can imagine the looks on the faces of the passing competitors when they saw the “hot favorites” carrying out repairs by the roadside. I’m convinced that 90 percent of them were thinking as they drove by: what a pity it’s only a tire fault. But I was thinking: thank God, it’s only a tire fault.

On the way up the Saalburg I showed my impartial observer once again that my car hadn’t suffered from the journey. I covered the climb at a speed of 100 km/h [62 mph]. When I drove into Homburg, the main question to answer was whether I’d covered the section without a breakdown. As I was able to answer this question in the affirmative, my victory was now unquestioned. I then received congratulations from all sides. One of those well-wishers was Prince Isenburg.

On the next day another rather tough mechanical job awaited me. As the winner I had to dismantle my engine so that its cylinder dimensions

could be checked.1 This inspection was not just restricted to one cylinder, but involved all four. On engines where the valve train is operated from above, such dismantling means a good deal of work. Once again I missed lunch, and when the commission met afterwards to inspect the engine I had finished the job. The stated bore was correct. In fact it was a little less: we had said 105 mm, in fact it was 104.95 mm.

Prince Heinrich, who honored me with a speech at the prizegiving ceremony, was extremely kind. When he found out that the prize had to be drawn at the dinner from among the claimants, i.e., from among the three winners over three years, he said that it was his wish that, like Herr Erle and Kommerzienrat Opel, I kept the prize for one year. But then the man from the committee came over with the last ticket in the pot. Erle and Opel had already drawn. They had left the lucky ticket behind, so the valuable prize finally became mine.

What Director Fischer Had to Say

I am genuinely pleased that Director Porsche came first. I can assure you that I’d rather he won. Because in the end I did nothing other than drive the car, whereas Director Porsche designed the vehicle and also painstakingly carried out its testing. Almost every day he was in the factory from morning until night, supervising proceedings, and then when the vehicles were ready, he was out early in the morning when the Neunkirchner Allee was free of traffic, carrying out tests on the highway.

As far as my journey is concerned, there is really no story to tell. Everything went ahead without the slightest trouble, without any difficulties, without any breakdowns. I filled it with water, oil and gasoline and then just drove off. I didn’t need to exert myself filling the water, despite the often very slow driving which heated up the engine. I only added water once in three days.

The trust we placed in our motorcars was repaid in full. If I’d had one wish, it would have been a faster pace

During preparations for the 1910 Prince Heinrich that included aerodynamic testing on the Neunkirschner Allee, Austro-Daimler’s Chief Eduard Fischer also took the wheel. His skill was attested to by his fastest time in one of the event’s two speed tests.

179

throughout the Prince Heinrich trial and also during the speed competitions. I drove the car to its full extent during the race and achieved speeds of 140 km/h [87 mph]. I found both racing sections good and really do not know which I preferred. I even won the first race. The second race section was won by Director Porsche. In theory he had to win. Both cars were equally fast, but Director Porsche is smaller than me, so he is lighter and offers less air resistance. And according to the theories of Director Porsche, air resistance is the most dangerous antagonist of high speeds.

Our cars were therefore under strain because we had to travel too slowly. For others the reverse is often the case. For them, it is speed that wrecks their chances. Soon I became so anxious about the slow tempo that I asked the car in front to let me go on ahead, as I was entitled to under the regulations. A car that didn’t travel at least at 45 km/h [28 mph] had to let those behind pass. Of course the man in front pointed out that the vehicle in front of him was traveling equally slowly, but he still let me pass him. In this way I pushed my way forward from driver to driver, because I really had to find out the reason for this snail’s pace. After two hours I passed another car and suddenly there was a large gap in the convoy of vehicles. I was now able to travel for about an hour at a speed of 90 km/h [56 mph] before I reached the next smoothly running contestants. One single dawdling driver was holding up a whole series of vehicles.

Of the contestants driving Austro-Daimler vehicles I must, of course, highlight Count Schönfeld. He was third behind me. As is well-known, Count Schönfeld is a cavalry officer and he has all the brusqueness of someone from that walk of life. Perhaps it was his many years of study at Mittweida Technical College that enabled the Count to qualify so outstandingly.

The other users of Austro-Daimlers drove bravely. Perhaps it was stage fright that prevented them from reaching a higher position. I know, for example, from one of our drivers that he was very anxious before the race. Nevertheless, he was accustomed to driving a powerful vehicle. Starting, in particular, was a serious headache for him and that’s why on his journey to

the race he stopped more frequently and learned how to start. And this to the great displeasure of his independent observer, whose head was nearly torn off with every sudden start.

I’d also like to recall my independent observer. Herr Bavak was a senior medical officer in the Prussian army and was Prussian correctness personified. Usually, during the course of such a journey, a friendly relationship develops between the observer and the contestants, and it can then be hard for an observer to penalize his driver. But my observer was really incorruptible—I mean, of course, in a good-natured sort of way. When on the last day but one I opened the hood, he immediately took out his notebook and wrote “Hood opened.” “Because,” he said, “someone could have seen it.” Fortunately the opening of the hood is not penalized.

Finally, may I just say with regard to the organization that it left absolutely nothing to be desired.

1. There’s a conflict between this statement and the observation of a German engineer, who said, “As a result of the special design of the cylinder heads of the Austrian Daimler cars a very simple dismantling of the exhaust valve presented a large opening for the introduction of a measuring instrument, without the need for the cylinder itself to be dismantled.” He was correct in this, but failed to note that in the case of the Austro-Daimler of winner Porsche the officials decided that they wanted to check its dimensions in more detail.

180

solid silver model of a touring car. In a drawing at the prizegiving dinner, Porsche trumped his rival first-place winners from Benz and Opel (from the previous two years). Porsche thus added good luck to his formidable panoply of attributes.

Eduard Fischer could be proud of his contribution to an epic success. Thanks to his fine performance during the event he’d been tipped as a possible winner. Placing second, he won the prize of the Bavarian Automobile Club. The sharp-nosed, mustachioed engineer-manager, a former military man, more than manifested his mettle as an imperturbable, reliable and shrewd competitor.

On June 9 the Trial’s awards were presented at a gala banquet in Homburg. The 500 guests “applauded again and again” as Porsche and Fischer strolled again and again to the head table to collect their winnings. Afterward the 34-year-old winner was

besieged not only by the press but also by well-wishers. “Almost engulfed by his awards,” reported AAZ, “he had to shake the hands of his congratulators over and over and respond to their questions. It wasn’t easy to fight a path to him and exchange a few quiet words. Here as well, however, Director Porsche knew how to find the most practical solution and declared, in a kindly and modest manner, ‘Please compose the interview yourselves. You already know what I’m thinking.’ And one indeed did know or could read it in his eyes gleaming with happiness: he’d figured on victory, but hadn’t hoped for such a sensational and comprehensive success for his cars.”

At a private dinner in Homburg’s Savoy Hotel that evening Eduard Fischer eulogized his colleague. “In the Prince Heinrich Trial,” he said, “Director Ferdinand Porsche has celebrated a

PREVIOUS PAGE: British motor dealer C. J. Bendall offered this magnificent open tourer on the 27/80 chassis, as the Austro-Daimlers derived from the 1910 Prince Heinrich winners were known in Britain.

THIS PAGE AND FACING PAGE: Original Austro-Daimler document describes the sale and registration of a 22/86 model.

181

double victory, for he is driver and designer of the Austrian Daimlers in one person. Such a double success is not granted to many designers, for it presupposes a versatility which is seldom united in a single person, namely high technical knowledge, a fine mechanical understanding, ample energy and physical skill.

“Not many designers were granted this rare success,” Fischer continued. “If we go back into the annals of automotive history, we find only Levassor, the late designer for the house of Panhard & Levassor, Amédée Bollée, Renault and our domestic designer Otto Hieronimus. They’re the only ones who design and who, with their designs, are also able to walk off with victory. Ferdinand Porsche is now worthy to be ranked among them.” It was indeed an elite cadre to which surprisingly few engineers would be added in the years to come.

The AAZ’s man reflected on Porsche’s demeanor a year earlier after his cars were also-rans in the Prince’s Trial. “The 1909 model wasn’t fast enough,” the reporter recalled, “and thus inter-ested him no longer. But for 1910, Porsche said, he would build a Prince Heinrich car for which success would be assured. And he said that in the calm, quiet manner that is characteristic of this intelligent, uncomplicated man; he said it like someone who has an absolute conviction that he’d find the right answer, and one wanted to believe him, although it seemed improbable. Yet here once again the improbable has become reality.”

The timing of the Trial couldn’t have been better for Austro-Daimler. Only a week after it finished, Vienna’s annual automo-bile show opened. Amongst the Dual Monarchy’s auto producers, the Iron Team’s achievements in Germany put Austro-Daimler at

182

the top of a very tall pedestal. The winning car was in pride of place on Thursday, June 16, when Austria-Hungary’s Emperor Franz Joseph made the rounds. With Austro-Daimler’s President Hugo Marcus, who was also a director of the Vienna Bankverein, Ferdinand Porsche was on the stand to greet the noble visitor.

“This car won the Prince Heinrich Trial?” queried the Emperor.

“Yes indeed, Majesty,” answered Marcus. “This is the car and here”—gesturing to the engineer—“is Director Porsche, whose skill succeeded in gaining the victory. He was not only the driver but also the designer of the car.”

“That’s a wonderful achievement,” said the monarch. Turning to Porsche, he said, “And I heartily congratulate you on it. It gave me great pleasure that our domestic production cut such a fine figure in this international competition. The car stood up to a lot.”

Apprised that the cars not only had to complete the Trial but also were driven back to Vienna on the road, the Emperor said, “That’s a quite exceptional achievement, and it’s very gratifying that our industry is so proficient.” Before leaving the stand he added, “I congratulate you most heartily once again.”

On the evening of the following day the Austrian Automo-bile Club fêted the successful team. With Ferdinand Porsche

sitting on his right, the club’s President Alexander Pallavicini saluted their accomplishment:

Such a success is unique in the history of automobilism. If among 121 competitors one achieves the first, the second and the third places and brings two more cars home as well, that is a success that no other company has hitherto achieved.12 That is not only a victory for these outstanding drivers and the outstand-ing design of the cars that are here in question, but also a victory for the entire industry of our Austrian fatherland.

Responding, on Pallavicini’s left, Austro-Daimler’s Hugo Marcus graciously said that he could only speak of a success, not a victory, for none was seen to be defeated in an event like the Prince Heinrich in which all cars and drivers had performed

12. Even allowing for the hubris of the moment, this seems a fair appraisal. On five occasions from 1898 to 1900 Panhards placed one-two-three in French races ranging in length from 126 to 1,424 miles. Entries were much smaller, on the order of two dozen cars, and competition much less. In no major event on the level of the Prince Heinrich Trial had such a success been achieved. Later in 1910, using its Prince Heinrich models, Mercedes would place one-two-three in Russia’s 1,790-mile Emperor Nikolaus Trial against less challenging opposition.

183

in an exemplary manner. Marcus revealed the extent of their expectations before the start:

“When our drivers departed, with their cars built by Director Porsche, we had a positive feeling and the strong sensation that a success must come our way. In any event we anticipated success only in modest measure. We hoped that one or another of our cars would be well-placed, and possibly even reach the finish as the winner.”

Like Pallavicini, Marcus struck a nationalistic note in his per-oration: “We’ve shown the world that we need have no fear of those abroad.” Viewed by the world as a far more fragile entity than its bellicose German neighbor, Austria-Hungary could now hold up its head with pride thanks to the shrewdness and determi-nation of the man of the hour, Ferdinand Porsche.

Recognition of Porsche’s achievement wasn’t limited to his espousers at home. In Germany’s der Motorwagen an engineer noted the effort that had been made in perfecting the Austro-Daimler’s shape: “A very comprehensive and highly superior effort was shown by the Austrian Daimler cars, whose bodywork gave perhaps the most spirited impression of all. It was to be observed quite clearly that the Austro-Daimler bodies were prepared with the most meticulous thoroughness.” In Britain TheCar said, “First—second—third! What a sweeping triumph! The car reflects the greatest credit on Herr Porsche and the Austrian Daimler Company.13

“It is no exaggeration to say also that the standard produc-tions of the company could scarcely be bettered,” added The Car.Here was the crux of the matter for the men of Wiener Neustadt, who hoped that their great success would enliven sales of all their products. Interest in export markets was prized, of course, and bound to be stimulated by their victory in Germany, but greater

respect was also hoped for at home, where the “prophet without honor” syndrome seemed to apply. “Are there really such people?” was the surprised reaction of the Emperor at Vienna’s auto show when he was told that customers didn’t always show preference to the home-grown product.

SPECIALLY BUILT FOR THE JOB though it was, Porsche’s Prince Heinrich entry was obviously a very competent road car. Count Wimpffen was one of the first to prove this. He drove his car back from Homburg to Vienna and then added it to his fleet. By September he’d clocked up 2,500 more miles with complete satisfaction. This, plus general interest in what they’d wrought, convinced Austro-Daimler to lay down a series of 100 produc-tion cars.

This was a key decision in the history of Austro-Daimler and indeed of the career of Ferdinand Porsche. Had only the ten 1910 cars been made, the model would still deserve its fame. By producing a series of road cars, however, Wiener Neustadt laid claim to an historic honor: creation of the world’s first sports car. Not an out-and-out racing car, yet a superb road car capable of fine competition performance, the Prince Heinrich Austro-Daimler eminently qualified as a sports car.

Said one historian, it “was a milestone in sports-car history, and it’s no exaggeration to maintain that it represents one of the first production high-performance and sports cars in the history of

13. These great cars were never raced by the factory again. Austro-Daimler considered competing with them in the 1912 French Grand Prix, but abjured on the grounds that smaller 3-liter cars would be running in the same race, but in a different class, which the company thought beneath its dignity.

PAGE PRECEDING COLOR

FOLD-OUT: Bodied as a two-seater, the production 22/86 of 1911–1914 was a formidable sports car, one of the first of its kind. This Austro-Daimler or one like it was raced on the beach at Denmark’s Fanø by Ferdinand Porsche.

RIGHT: A high-angle view depicted a version of the Austro-Daimler 22/86 four that used magneto ignition for one set of spark plugs and a high-tension coil and distributor for the other set. Porsche chose dual ignition for these engines with reliability in mind.

184

ABOVE: New York’s Healey body company, claiming exclusivity in Austro-Daimler sales, bodied this artillery-wheeled 22/86 as a roadster with spectacles-style windscreen. At least one car of this type survives.

LEFT: Ferdinand Porsche’s reputation as one of the outstanding automotive engineers of his day was exploited and indeed enhanced by Austro-Daimler’s British distributor in its advertising of the success of the Iron Team in the 1911 Alpine Trials. Readers were reminded of the Prince Heinrich sweep of 1910.

185

the automobile, setting entirely new standards.” “Without actually being a racing car,” stated The Autocar at the time, “it gives that high efficiency which those who appreciate life, and life in abundance, are only too willing to pay for.” That’s been a good definition of the best sports cars ever since.

For the production model, named the 22/86 (27/80 in Britain), Porsche gave up chains in favor of shaft drive to a live rear axle.14

This allowed some sharing of components with Austro-Daimler’s other big car, the 27/60. It continued the use of a separate four-speed gearbox, under the front floorboards, with two huge foot-operated brakes at its output shaft. Behind them was the pivot for the rear axle’s torque tube. Porsche’s unique two-piece pressing housed the axle with its 2.52:1 final-drive ratio.

The road car kept the wheelbase of the competition model, with a track of 52.2 inches. Its chassis alone weighed 2,315 pounds. Ferdinand Porsche’s masterpiece of an engine remained essen-tially unchanged, although its valves and ports were reduced in size from those of the team cars. Standardized for the production car was the simpler log-style inlet manifold used for some of the Prince Heinrich entries.

By the autumn of 1911 the new model was on display at Europe’s motor shows, where it deservedly drew admirers. In the UK the 22/86 was priced at 875 crowns, equivalent to 4,260 dollars. Jacob Lohner & Co. was among those companies that bodied it, including among its efforts a magnificent tourer that was a gift from Austro-Hungary’s Emperor to his German coun-terpart. Several were bodied as two-seaters, including a chassis that Ferdinand Porsche drove in speed trials on the beach at Denmark’s Fanø. Other two-seaters were made by New York’s Healey body company. Presenting itself as the marque’s exclusive American agent, Healey brought a number of 22/86 chassis to the New World. The model was offered by Wiener Neustadt through 1914; it is thought that some 50 were completed.

In Italy Parma’s arch-enthusiast, Prince Elias, naturally became a 22/86 owner. He commissioned a body from Jacob Lohner that was the most spectacular ever mounted on this chassis

and indeed one of the most dramatic in automotive history. A four-seated open tourer, its doors were flush with its sheer sides, which tapered inward to a peak at the rear. Its radiator was cowled in the style of a medieval jousting helmet with a sharp peak above its opening. All four wheels had cycle-type fenders carried by the axles, not the body. Completing Elias of Parma’s stunning ensemble were four huge, shiny, black exhaust pipes curving down to a horizontal exhaust.

The 22/86 owner had the satisfaction of driving one of the fastest road cars of its day. Indeed, it doesn’t hold up today’s traffic. “Blipping the throttle pedal produces an instant response from the engine and the whole car heaves and rocks on its springs,” said Eddie Berrisford, who restored a 22/86. “The exhaust emits a deep rumble as we pick up the revs, accompa-nied by the rhythmic clatter of the exposed valve gear. We’re running on just a whiff of throttle, but already modern cars are beginning to get in the way. It occurs to me that they are doing the legal speed limit of 60, and my estimated 1,500 revs is probably nearer 70 mph. The car feels uncannily stable; the steering is tight and quick without being twitchy. Using the hand brake is the normal way to slow the car, and this has a very controlled and reassuring bite.

“Very occasionally you know that a particular car has a certain something which makes it special,” Berrisford continued, “and this Prince Henry Austro-Daimler is very special indeed.” There were many contenders, he said, for the honor of being judged the first sports car. “To stand out from this crowd you really had to be different, or do something very special. With the Austro-Daimler Prince Henry, Porsche achieved both of these goals. I believe he should be thought of, and remembered as, the Father of the Sports Car.” This quarter offers no argument to the contrary.

14. Making full use of the available materiel, the cars that competed in Germany were ultimately converted from chain drive to shaft drive to be sold.

established 1950Automotive Reference™

Bentley Publishers, 1734 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-1804 USATel: 617-547-4170 • Toll Free: 800-423-4595 • Fax: 617-876-9235http://www.bentleypublishers.com/contact-sales

Ferdinand Porsche — Genesis of GeniusRoad, Racing and Aviation Innovation 1900 to 1933

by Karl Ludvigsen

Winner of three International Automotive Media Awards, including:• 2008 Best of the Year• 2008 Best of Books• Best Design of 2008

Price: $99.95Bentley Stock Number: GPETPublication date: 2009.oct.1ISBN: 978-0-8376-1557-8Hardcover, 9.5in. x 12 in.Case quantity: 1496 pages570 B/W and color photos & illustrations, including:• 7 specially-commissioned 18.5 in. x 12 in. full color foldout draw-

ings of some of the most important early car designs of Ferdinand Porsche by renowned Swiss automotive artist Wolfgang Franke

• 9.5 in. x 12 in. full color plate insert showing engine detail from the 1910 Prince Heinrich car

• Reproductions of original pages from Ferdinand Porsche’s original handwritten notes

• Many previously unpublished photos from the Porsche family archives

In Ferdinand Porsche—Genesis of Genius, author Karl Ludvigsen reveals a dynamic young innovator who helped to chart the course of the automobile through the first decades of the twentieth century. As early as 1900, at the age of 25, Ferdinand Porsche pioneered hybrid technology to power his automobile designs. Once gasoline gained dominance as the power-source of choice, Porsche became relentless in his goal to design the fastest and most durable automobiles in Europe.

Porsche’s engineering brilliance did not stop at the automobile. He also made significant contributions to the early development of airplane engines and military transport vehicles. And in addition to his hands-on style of engineering, Ferdinand Porsche was a tireless managing executive in the automotive industry.

Ferdinand Porsche—Genesis of Genius explores in depth the unique combination of ambition, determination and genius that were the genesis of an automotive dynasty which has continued to thrive and expand for over a century.

So, the man who had such influence on our abiding passion is brought vividly to life, thanks in no small part to the huge amount of new material that Karl Ludvigsen has so painstakingly unearthed through sheer hard slog and weighty research. . . . This book meets all the criteria of written greatness and is without parallel. — Porsche Post

Table of contents:

1. Twentieth-Century Debut 19002. Bohemian Beginnings 1875–19003. Electrifying Automobiles 1900–19054. Jellinek’s Dream 1906–19085. Viva Austro-Daimler 1906–19146. Racing in Their Blood 1909–19117. Creativity in Confl ict 1910–19188. Opportunity in the Air 1909–19189. Stellar Sixes 1918–192310. Sascha to the Rescue 1921–192311. Stuttgart Calling 1919–192612. Shooting Stars 1923–192813. Interregnum in Steyr 1928–193014. Genius for Sale 1930–1934

Chapter 8 Opportunity in the Air 1909-1918: In his characteristic bowler, Porsche observed a fl ight test with one of his engines on the Steinfeld in 1911.

Chapter 3: Electrifying Automobiles 1900-1905 In neat sketches in his own notebook, Porsche worked out the electrical connections that would be needed to control the forward speeds of his powerful Panhard-powered Mixtes of 1905.

BentleyPublishersBentleyPublishers.com.com

Chapter 10: Sascha to the Rescue 1921-1923Cutaway drawing of the 1922 Austro-Daimler “Sascha” ADS-R. The ADS-R Sascha pictured here is the car driven by Alfred Neubauer in the 1922 Targa Florio.

bentley_gpet_new.product.announcement.pdf

2008 IAMA Award Winner