Austrian Ferdinand Porsche founded the company in 1931 after creating the first Volkswagen. The first Porsche, the Porsche 64, was developed in 1939 using many components from the Volkswagen Beetle.
The 356 was next and came about as a project of Ferdinand's son Ferry. Porsche again used mostly Beetle parts and commissioned Reutter Carosseri, another company involved with the Volkswagen Beetle prototypes, to produce the steel body.
Not long afterwards, on January 30, 1951, Ferdinand Porsche died from complications following a stroke.
Porsches started with an air-cooled rear-engine configuration and has kept to the design ever since. In 1963, the company launched the Porsche 911to this configuration, but this time with a 6-cylinder "boxer" engine. The design caused internal problems with fights between Ferry Porsche's eldest son, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, and Erwin Komenda who led the body design department until then.
The 911 has become Porsche's best known model. It remains in production, but, after several generations, current models simply share the concept of a air-cooled, rear-engined, six-cylinder coupe.
In 1972, Ferry Porsche and his sister, Louise Piech, decided to introduce an executive board from outside the Porsche family and a supervisory board of family members. FA Porsche founded his own design company, Porsche Design. Ferdinand Piech, who developed the mechanics of the racing cars, formed his own engineering bureau and developed a 5-cylinder-inline diesel engine for Mercedes-Benz before moving to Audi and working up to the Volkswagen Group boards.
In 1990, Porsche drew up a memorandum of understanding with Toyota to learn and benefit from Japanese production methods. Toyota also corroborates with hybrid technology.
After a number of chairman, successful and otherwise, Wiedeking took over the chairmanship of the board at a time when Porsche appeared vulnerable to a takeover by a larger company. During his long tenure, Wiedeking has transformed Porsche into a very efficient and profitable company.
Since 2005, the extended Porsche and Piech families have controlled all of Porsche AG's voting shares. In early October 2005 the company announced the acquisition of an 18.53% stake in Volkswagen AG and disclosed intentions to acquire more. As of June 2006, the Porsche AG stake in Volkswagen had risen to 25.1%, giving Porsche a blocking minority.
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