Porsche has been making sports cars for more than sixty years, but the historic roots of the brand go further back to 1931, when Ferdinand Porsche founded and registered an engineering design bureau in Stuttgart. Up until 1948, when Ferry Porsche built the first Porsche automobile (the legendary Type 356), the design bureau offered engineering services to important companies around the world.

It continues to do so to this day through the Porsche Engineering Group GmbH, based in Weissach, which carries out development work on behalf of car manufacturers and suppliers, as well as companies from other sectors.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Porsche design bureau, the Porsche Museum will hold a special exhibition called “Porsche Engineering – 80 Years of Porsche Designs” that will honor the most important and interesting developments from the past eight decades. From June 21 to September 11, the museum will display around 20 special examples ranging from whole vehicle developments to industrial projects.

There will be ten vehicles on display including a Wanderer Limousine from 1931, the legendary Auto Union Grand Prix racing car and the Audi Sport Quattro S1 with a Porsche dual clutch gearbox (PDK). The exhibition will also include a 1997 Harley Davidson V-Rod, which features the Porsche-designed V2 engine and a 1984 Linde forklift truck. The Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 9 am to 6 pm.

By Dan Mihalascu

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