Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche had a legendary engineering background, starting in the late 19th Century. Much later the Porsche design studio, run by his son Ferry, designed a 4 wheel drive rear engined supercharged Grand Prix car for the post war Grand Prix era for their client Dusios Cisitalia company - along with a road car designs. Ferdinad Porsche had no hand in this as he was still interned as a result of his military designs during the war, but afterwards said there was nothing on the design of the Cisitalia that he would have done differently - so you could say the standard of Engineering at Gmund in Austria, was as capable as anywhere in the world. After a Porsche prototype road car was built and sold, the ensuing publicity led to orders which resulted in little over 50 cars being built at Gmund, which now employed 270 people. This was prior to the factory being relocated to Germany within the Reutter bodywork factory, where the 356 model was continually developed until 1965. The 6 cylinder 911 model was introduced in 1963. A less expensive 912 was also offered and nearly 33,000 of these were sold before 912 production ceased in 1969 - after which the 914 "Volkswagen-Porsche" was introduced, which sold remarkably well. It's successor in 1976 was the front engined 924 using the 2 litre Audi engine, followed in 1978 by the V8 engined 928.
