Born in Haffersdorf, Bohemia, son of a village tinsmith. He showed early evidence of the technical genius to come, by wiring his family home for electricity. His only formal technical training was as a part-time engineering student in Vienna.
By the age of 25 he had entered the field of automotive design and embarked on a career of innovation dwarfing that of any other automotive designer in the world. His first car design being accepted by Jacob Lohner & Co. of Vienna. Over the next 20 years the temperamental brilliant engineer became associated with every major automobile manufacturer in Germany, designing a dozen of the most technically significant cars in history. He moved to Stuttgart in 1923 and set up his own engineering consulting firm, the corporate predecessor of today’s Porsche AG.
See (his son) ‘Ferry Porsche’.
