Ferdinand Porsche had an important part in the development of aeroplanes and racing cars, and the manufacture of army tanks for the German Wehrmacht. He was an automobile engineer who had been granted more than a thousand patents. He was appointed chief engineer at the Mercedes-Benz Company in Stuttgart in the 1920s. After that, he set up his own engineering design and workshop and designed among others the Volkswagen car. At the plant where Volkswagen was made in Wolfsburg, he was chief of operations and at the end of the war, he was interned by the Allied Forces.

He was released a few years later and commenced building his first car with his son, Ferry Porsche. The car was called the Porsche 356 and it was a sports car reminiscent of the Volkswagen. It had the same rear-mounted, four-cylinder boxer motor just like the VW. It was not a powerful sports car, developing only 40 brake horsepower with maximum speed of 87 miles per hour (140 km/h). The 356 was first produced as a convertible and later as a hard top version. It distinguishable by the very stylish and innovative body. It was developed in the workshop of Erwin Komenda, an expert in restrained streamlining who was in charge of sheet metal and design techniques at Porsche since the VW Beetle.  The new style of closed coupe was designed by Komenda and it was to become the embodiment of the sports car, thanks to its fastback style.

This tradition was continued by Komenda and Ferdinand “Butzi” Porsche, the founder’s grandson, with the famous 911 model.

The 911 became easily recognizable: it had attractive sloping bonnet and the characteristic “frogs eyes” headlights, elegant curves running from the top edge of the windscreen to the rear bumper and a straight waistline. From a functional and mechanical point of view, it was more like the BMW 1500, although it retained the classic features of the original Porsche. The new 911 will become the foundation stone of Porsche’s identity, even though the design was not always appreciated. During the 1970’s and 1980’s,  attempts by designers to distance Porsche from its legendary design saw the company near the edge of financial disaster. The more modern 924 model, “a people’s Porsche”, developed with Volkswagen, as well as the 928 were far from fulfilling customer expectations.

In the 1990`s, the company realized that what for over twenty years was seen as a straitjacket was in fact a distinct market advantage. During the 1990`s, Porsche again became highly profitable by reinstating the classic Porsche features. Nearly forty people now worked in the design department on further developments of the long-running 911. These developments included the 911 GTI, a powerful combination sports and racing car developed by the in-house designer Anthony R. Hatter. In 1999, Porsche proudly presented the new Boxster model which enabled Porshe to establish a second independent range of models.