Date of Birth : December 11 1935
Deceased : April 5 2012
Biography of Ferdinand Alexander Porsche
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, commonly nicknamed Butzi, was born in Stuttgart December 11th 1935. He was the eldest grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the old professor and founder of the company that evoluated to the company Porsche is now. From his childhood on, Butzi was enthusiast about cars and it’s not hard to imagine cars influenced his complete life.
The Porsche 356
By the time he was at secondary school in Switzerland in 1953, the Porsche 356 was already a commercial hit far exceeding his father’s modest expectations. Butzi was being groomed to follow in the family engineering tradition. He completed an internship with the ignition specialists Robert Bosch before starting work in the Porsche technical design office in Zuffenhausen, a suburb of Stuttgart, on engine-building and prototype construction, having flunked his studies at the Ulm School of Design.
By 1958 plans were already afoot for an upmarket six-cylinder successor to the decade-old 356 range. Butzi was given the task of creating a body style for this new “Type 7” car that would be roomier and sleeker than the already rather quaintly rotund 356. This Porsche car for the 60s had to maintain the ideals of elegant functionalism that had made the 356 a cult object among devoted fans within its own lifetime; it had to be compact and rear-engined, with nothing superfluous or distracting.
The Porsche 911
It was a formidable task for a man still in his 20s, but the new Porsche 911, launched at the Frankfurt motor-show in 1963, exceeded expectations. It eclipsed its predecessor to become the car that would define everything the Porsche brand stands for. After nearly five decades, the basic outline that Butzi Porsche sculpted in clay is still with us, recently relaunched in its seventh generation but recognisably the same model. No other car currently in production is so instantly recognisable. At its launch, the new Porsche was known as the 901 until Peugeot complained, pointing out that they held the rights to all car names with a zero in the middle. Hence the 901 became the 911, a rear-engined coupe that simply refuses to be replaced, so loyal are its buyers.
Not only was he involved in creating the cars for daily use, but he spent time in designing race cars too, like the Porsche 804 F1 car, and the sensational Porsche 904 Carrera GTS.
Porsche Design
In 1972 the family withdrew themselves from the company and he started his own company : Porsche Design Studio, first in Stuttgart and later on in Zell am See in Austria. The Porsche Design Studio is well known for lots of things, like cookware , clothing, shoes, leatherware, sunglasses, pens and much more.
