Latest News
Volvo: Safety Beyond the Star RatingsHow the VW Beetle Gave Us the Porsche 911
The basic formula of an air-cooled, rear-mounted boxer engine was the foundation that gave us both the Volkswagen Beetle and the Porsche 911.
One Formula, Many Cars
If you squint, you can see it in the round headlights and the fastback rear end. You can hear it too, in that signature rumble of a boxer engine. There is a fuzzy yet distinctive throughline between the Volkswagen Beetle, people’s car and flower power icon, and the sportscar’s sportscar, the Porsche 911. And it is not just your imagination or the common tendency for automotive designers to crib from one another (more on that in a moment). In fact, this is the story of three cars, three generations of guys all named Ferdinand Porsche, and how even the darkest of beginnings can evolve into something altogether different.
Volkswagen Beetle: Genesis
The Volkswagen Type 1, later known as the Beetle, has its start in the ominous period in 1930s Germany. German engineer Dr. Ferdinand Porsche was brainstorming an “everyman’s car,” a design that would be affordable to buy and maintain and cost-effective to produce. He worked on an early prototype, the Type 12, for the motorcycle maker Zündapp in 1931 and another prototype, the Type 32, for yet another motorcycle maker, NSU Motorenwerken AG, in 1933.
Porsche was not the only one who felt a universally affordable, cheap, and practical car was what Germany needed, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler did too. In tandem with his new Autobahn initiative, the Volkswagen, or people’s car, would be the vehicle for Nazi Germany. Hitler hired Dr. Porsche to help design the new car, though with a good deal of the dictator’s input. Dr. Porsche’s new Volkswagen design was a continuation of his earlier people’s car ideas and laid the foundation for not just the Beetle, but many subsequent Volkswagens and Porsches to come.
The goal of simplicity and affordability was achieved with a rear engine design utilizing an air-cooled four-cylinder boxer engine. The basic bug-like shape that later gave the Type 1 its Beetle moniker has several claimants. Ever the megalomaniac, Hitler said the idea was his; an easy enough idea if one simply takes his cues from nature, he crowed. And yet, Porsche’s earlier designs for Zündapp and NSU clearly resemble the Beetle’s signature shape. That shape goes even further back, however, to work from in 1925 by Mercedes-Benz designer Béla Barényi, as well as in the Tatra V570, with its first prototype from 1931.
Prototype production for the Volkswagen Type 1 began in 1938 but was halted shortly thereafter as factories were converted to produce war machinery. In the case of Volkswagen production, a new military design, the Type 82 a.k.a. the Küblewagen, used the same basic architecture for a jeep-like military runabout, was built. This vehicle would later evolve into the Volkswagen Thing.
It is ironic in the extreme that, in Hitler’s twisted utopian vision, the Third Reich’s Uber mensch would have been cruising the Autobahn in a fleet of Volkswagen Beetles. History truly is stranger than fiction. Even stranger how the Nazi’s “people’s car” would go on to become a hippy-dippy, free-love counterculture icon in the coming decades.
Porsche 356: The Missing Link
But how do we get from the Volkswagen Beetle to the Porsche 911, you ask? Enter one Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche, son of Dr. Porsche. Ferry had had the idea for a sporty version of the Beetle going back to before the war. He even had a prototype designed with the intention of running the car in a planned Berlin-to-Rome race, which never came to fruition.
After the war, Ferry decided that the path forward for Porsche was to build just such a car, combining the simplicity and lightness of the Beetle with a little extra power and a lower profile for a sporty road car. While the Porsche’s German workshop was in Allied hands, used as a truck depot, Ferry set up shop across the border in Gmünd, Austria working on tractors and agricultural machinery.
A contract to build racecars for Cistalian race team in 1946 was the impetus Porsche needed to begin work on his dream of a new style of sports car. Along with technical director Karl Rabe and designer Erwin Komenda, Ferry laid out the formula that would be Porsche’s signature through to today. These included the round headlights and fastback sloping rear deck (just like the Beetle) and the air-cooled four-cylinder engine in back (again, just like the Beetle). The first few Porsche 356s, hand-built in Austria from 1948 through 1950, were mid-engine and featured an all-aluminum body. When facilities were relocated back to Stuttgart, Germany, the engine was moved behind the rear axle and the bodies made from steel.
There would be four different series of the Porsche 356 in its production run from 1948 through 1965 (the final cars delivered in 1966). The car was a surprise success, not least for Ferry Porsche himself. The initial plans for a run of perhaps 500 cars in the early 1950s turned into 7,600 in the first five years of production. As the first Porsche, the 356 has a special place in automotive history and in the hearts of die-hard collectors. Today, even non-running barn find examples of 356’s can go for tens of thousands while rare and exceptionally maintained ones topping $1 million.
Porsche 911: The Beetle Evolved
When it finally came time to replace the 356 in the early 1960s, there was another Porsche, this time the grandson, Ferdinand “Butzi” Porsche who spearheaded a new design for the 901. Like the 356, the Porsche 901 would follow the basic formula of a rear-mounted, air-cooled boxer engine. Unlike the 356, which initially made do with the four-cylinder engine from the Beetle, the new 901 would be getting a proper 2.0L six-cylinder. (A four-cylinder version, the 912, was also offered.)
The 901’s name did not last long, French carmaker Peugeot sued, claiming the rights to any numeric car name with a zero in the middle. Thus, the Porsche 901 became the Porsche 911. The basics of the 911 have not changed radically over its nearly sixty years in production. The engine is still in back and still a boxer, but the 911 has continued to evolve incrementally over the decades.
The Targa top, first seen in 1967, was Porsche’s attempt to circumvent safety regulations on convertibles (regulations that were never enacted). The 911 got its turbocharger starting with the 930 generation in 1975. The most seismic change for the 911 and the classic Beetle formula came in 1994 when Porsche finally ditched air-cooling for water-cooling.
Today, the 992-generation Porsche 911 is indeed a vastly different car from Volkswagen Beetle with which it shares its automotive DNA. But like the ancient Archaeopteryx and the modern-day Peregrine falcon, the family resemblance between the original Volkswagen Beetle and today’s supercar-beating Porsche 911 are there if you know what to look for.
