Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche’s engineering consultancy designed cars for other manufacturers (including, controversially, the Volkswagen Beetle) for decades before it built one under its own name.^[1] The Porsche 64 of 1939, a streamlined Beetle-based racer, is usually cited as the first car to wear the family name; series production of Porsche’s own models began after the war, in Gmünd, Austria, with the 356. The rear-engined air-cooled layout that car established carried through to the 911, launched in 1963, and the company has spent every decade since living with and occasionally departing from that inheritance. Volkswagen Group has held a controlling stake since 2012, closing a loop that started with Ferdinand Porsche’s own prewar work for the company.