Ferry Porsche

Ferry Porsche (Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, 1909 to 1998) was an Austrian-German automobile designer and automaker-entrepreneur who ran the Porsche company in Stuttgart and turned it into a major sports car manufacturer. The son of Ferdinand Porsche, he joined his father's Stuttgart design bureau when it opened in April 1931 and managed testing, design coordination and client relations. After the Second World War, while his father was held in France, he ran the company, moved it to Gmünd in Austria in 1946 and oversaw the hand-built first Porsche 356, ordered by a Zürich dealer in the winter of 1947. The 356 ended the firm's role as a designer for others and set the pattern for its later sports cars, which began to win at Le Mans from 1951. After his father's death in 1951 he was the company's most responsible official as general manager and chairman of the board of management. In 1972 he converted the family limited partnership into a public company and became honorary chairman of the supervisory board, a position he kept until his death in 1998.