40 years ago design ceased to be something you did and became something you could sell. The 911 rode that wave
Dr Porsche was Moravian, and in that dialect the name is pronounced Por-shay. He was also, however, a key figure among the central European engineers who defined the uniquely German concept of the automobile. As a company Porsche fed off this culture but also soon defined a distinct culture of its own. The thing about cultures, though, is that, by definition, they evolve.
Herein lies the paradox of what was originally the Porsche Type 901; a paradox that explains some of the creative tension about the very idea of design.
Designers believe they have achieved the optimum, but they also believe that change and improvement are necessary and essential. Thus, the 901. Not a project that was finished in 1963 but one that had only just begun.
No one could have predicted its success. A more practical and refined four-seater car had been a Porsche preoccupation from the early ’50s: a sheet-metal expression of the confidence and appetite for luxury created by the prosperity of the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle. One example: the Type 530, a clumsily enlarged 356, a design that did not evolve at all.
At this time, many designers passed through the Porsche drawing office. One of them was Count Albrecht Goertz (career highlights also include the BMW 507), a playboy type who had worked for Raymond Loewy in New York, putting him in touch with the fin and bomb squad of US designers. Some of Goertz’s ideas fed into the incubating 901 culture, confirming an American connection with Porsche that began when the ur-Doctor visited Detroit to learn about Ford’s production methods.
But the various competing proposals were resolved by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche – son of Ferry, grandson of Ferdinand. I met him in the family compound in Zell am See and he showed me, as he had shown many visitors before, how the distinctive side elevation of the 901 was based on two overlapping ellipses.
This first 2+2 901 was more Cold War limousine than the ultimate Sportwagen. Not all German design is based on the systematic principles of Ulm’s Hochschule für Gestaltung which gave us Braun’s minimalism. A lot of German design is just plain weird, as students of Blohm & Voss aircraft and Hanomag trucks know all too well. And this was the 901, which went on sale as the no
