Porsche Engineering Celebrates 80th Anniversary with Special Museum Exhibition

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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New Porsche 929 Design Study by Julliana Cho

The 2+2 coupe is a long-standing tradition in motoring. The Porsche 928, Lamborghini Espada and Ferrari 330 GTC all adhered to this formula with impressive results.

UK designer Julliana Cho’s Porsche 929 concept study builds on this tradition while also weaving aerodynamic styling, the brand’s design heritage and an innovating car sharing program into the mix.

The 929’s theoretical dimensions make it smaller than the Porsche Panamera but larger than the 911. Aside from the design itself, what makes the 929 stands out from the pack is Cho’s imaginative (though possibly impractical and expensive) car sharing scheme.

Interested parties join the Porsche Car Sharing club and receive a smart key in the mail. They then activate their smart key and finalise their personal details online before moving on to the next step.

Here, club members can specify everything from body shape to interior configuration as well as wheel design, exterior paint and material options. Once these details have been saved, club members locate their nearest charging station where their car is quite literally assembled before their eyes. When finished, the cars are returned to the charging station and disassembled ready for the next customer.

At least, that’s what I gathered from the young female designer's illustrations. I may be wrong, and welcome any corrections Cho or our readers care to provide. You can check out our full gallery of images below.

By Tristan Hankins

Sources: Julliana Cho via Yanko

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