Born : April 15 1952
Biography Bernd Kahnau
Bernd Kahnau sort of grew up with Porsche. His father, Willi Kahnau started working at Porsche in 1951. He set up the production line for the Porsche 356 in Zuffenhausen. Later he even became plant manager. His son Bernd actually wanted to start working at BMW after his engineering studies. Kahnau just wanted to avoid to work for the same company as his father. However, faith decided something else. Willi Kahnau suffered a fatal heart attack in January 1979. After Willi Kahnau’s death, Karl Rabe visited the Kahnau family every once and a while on behalf of Ferry Porsche. And it was Rabe who could convince Bernd Kahnau to pick up a job at Porsche.
The Porsche management knew Kahnau was active in motorsports. So they used him in the production of the Porsche 924 GTS. With only 59 cars produced, that was a short term project. So afther that finished, he continued as production planner for the chassis production of the Porsche 928. During the Porsche 924 GTS project, Bernd Kahnay came in touch with Friedrich Bezner , the Porsche 911 project manager at the time.
In 1982, Bezner convinced Kahnau to come to Weissach, at the development center, to take on the jobin the project management team of the Porsche 911. In 1988, Kahnau becomes the project manager for the first model of the Porsche 911 Speedster. When the cornerstones of the Porsche 993 model were defined, as soon as early 1989.
The board of directors wanted the Porsche 993 to significantly outperform the Porsche 964, without costing a single penny more. The complete Porsche 993 project turned out to be a succes, and that could be seen in the sales figures too.
Bernd Kahnau was trusted the project management for later versions of the Porsche 911, lncluding the Porsche 996, Porsche 997 and Porsche 991. After the presentation of the Porsche 991, Kahnau retires from Porsche. Kahnau’s year long responsability for the project management of the Porsche 911 nicknamed him the ‘911 maker’.
We strongly recommend to read the book „Porsche 993 – 25 YEARS 1994 – 2019“ by Andreas Gabriel from Berlin Motor Books to find out more about Bernd Kahnau.
