Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche - Early Life

Early Life

Ferdinand Porsche Sr was chief designer at Austro-Daimler in Austria. His designs were focused on compact street cars and race cars. Austro-Daimler was so strongly tied to the local royalty that the Austrian double-headed eagle became the trademark of the company. The day Ferry Porsche was born, his father was competing with one of his race cars (called the Maja) at Semmering, finishing first in his class. He found out about his son's birth by telegram.

Ferry Porsche's mother was Aloisia Johanna Kaes. He had an older sister, Louise Piëch, who was five years his senior. He was baptized Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, with the name Ferdinand after his father, the name Anton after his grandfather, and the name Ernst after his uncle on his mother's side. Early in his childhood he picked up the nickname "Ferry" rather than the usual nickname "Ferdy", as Ferdy reminded his parents too much of a typical coachman nickname — a profession that, coincidentally, was made obsolete by the family's work.

During the following years, the family moved around a lot. He and his father spent much time together in workshops where he began early to learn about mechanical engineering. They also used to tour around Europe and the United States of America, where they raced the cars they designed.

Ferry remarked later, "One could say that I was born with the automobile". For example, on Christmas Eve of 1920, Ferry Porsche was originally misled by his parents, who first presented him with a miniature coach pulled by a goat, while his real present was a petrol-driven miniature car with a four-stroke, two-cylinder engine specially designed by his father. Ferry Porsche learned to drive when he was only 10 years old. At age 12 he drove a real race car, the Austro-Daimler Sascha, which had just won its class at Targa Florio, Sicily, in 1922.

Ferry Porsche attended school at Wiener Neustadt and Stuttgart, concentrating on mathematics.