The first Porsche 356 was built in Stuttgart in March 1950. While Ferry Porsche was forced to withdraw increasingly for reasons of time from the actual construction and engineering work, taking on management responsibilities instead, the 356 quickly became a best seller, the free capacities available at Reutter soon being exhausted and several other coachbuilders joining the project. "We would never have dreamt back then that ultimately we would build 78,000 units of the Type 356 sports car", added Ferry Porsche years later on a very satisfied note.
An important factor crucial to the success of the young company was the early focus on exports, with Ferry Porsche shipping the first cars to America as early as in 1950. Here, in the world's largest and most important sales market, the Porsche 356 quickly won over the hearts of sports drivers - and not least those of many Hollywood stars. Introducing models such as the 356 Speedster, Ferry Porsche offered American customers exactly what they were looking for, with no less than half of the Company's annual production going to the United States as early as in 1955.
Apart from exports, Ferry Porsche's other great passion was motorsport, likewise serving as a catalyst to promote the brand. Instead of advertising or conventional publicity, the idea was to let his sports cars speak for themselves by winning races right in front of the public's eyes: "The extreme demands we face in racing quickly show any weak points on the cars and encourage our engineers to look for new and better solutions." Motorsport was also a source of ongoing technical progress in the eyes of Ferry Porsche, with experience gained here going directly into the ongoing development and optimisation of the Company's production models.
Ferry Porsche, the Entrepreneur
Ferry Porsche was always very successful in understanding the signs of the times and sensing any change in the market. So in the late `50s he realised that the Porsche 356, despite all the efforts made to enhance the car's "fitness", still remained a close relative to the VW Beetle and therefore did not offer great prospects for the future. Instead of continuing the development of this proven model, Ferry Porsche therefore decided to build an entirely new car following the proven Porsche concept, with an air-cooled horizontally-opposed engine mounted at the back.
And this was no easy task, since the 356 had already become an absolute classic within just one and a half decades.By the early `60s three of Ferry Porsche's four sons, who in the meantime was already holding his first grandson in his arms, had followed the example of their father and worked actively in the automotive industry - particularly Ferdinand Alexander who worked in the Company's Model Department as an engineer. Together with Ferdinand Alexander, Ferry Porsche started developing the looks and design of the successor to the 356, which to begin with was to bear the model designation 901.
In the words of Ferdinand Alexander Porsche reporting on their joint project: "When I designed the 911 back then, he was right there behind me from the very beginning. Not because I was his son, but rather because he was convinced of the car. He always had an exquisite sense of shape and he never liked extreme colours and flashy shapes."