Sportwagen King

For the crowds of West Germans circulating amidst the gleaming chromium and tingling scent of new leather at Frankfurt's 37th International Automobile Show last week, there was much to be proud of. Flashy B.M.W.'s and new models of such prewar favorites as the Mercedes showed plainly why the revived German automobile industry is gobbling up more and more (21.6%) of the world's export markets.

Star of the show was a postwar newcomer: the Porsche (pronounced Portia), a rear-engined car that looks like an inverted soup spoon. To its 16 models, selling from $2,995 to $6,000, Porsche last week added a new one, the Porsche Carrera, named after the Mexican road race which Porsche has dominated in the small sports-car division. The four-cylinder, 115 h.p. Carrera has a top speed of 125 m.p.h. and a price low enough ($4,297) to compete with the Jaguar and Lancia cars. Since its first Sportwagen was produced just six years ago, Porsche has won innumerable speed and endurance titles (420 in 1954 alone). Last year at Mexico's 1,908-mile Carrera Pan-Americana, four-cylinder Porsche Spyder 550s (top speed: 140 m.p.h.) won four out of the first five places in the small sports-car competition, third and fourth in the race for all classes.

20 M.P.H. Most of the credit for this unparalleled record goes to the late Ferdinand Porsche, who designed his first car, a battery-driven model that made 20 m.p.h., in 1899. Porsche built one of the world's first streamlined racers in 1910, designed a revolutionary engine for a 26-ton, self-propelled gun in World War I. During the '20s and '30s, his extravagant methods of car-building and his liking for experiments nearly broke a series of employers, but his cars dominated European racing.

In 1934 Adolf Hitler proclaimed Porsche a Nazi hero, commissioned him to design the Third Reich's famous "people's car" (Volkswagen). Porsche produced a design, but the Nazis, who built only 200, abandoned the project (after milking some 300,000 Germans for advance payments) and assigned Porsche to design weapons, notably the famed Tiger tank. In 1945, he was arrested by French troops and after a trial, jailed for two years as a war criminal.

Mechanics Mark. Porsche and his son Ferdinand Jr. launched their sports-car factory at Gmuend, Austria in 1949, with $50,000 in capital and a first model featuring a souped-up Volkswagen engine, produced only 50 cars in their first year. In 1950 they moved into a former barracks at Stuttgart, developed a series of hand-tooled, air-cooled engines that range today from 44 to 115 h.p., and expanded to the present line of 16 models. The elder Porsche died in 1951, but sales continued to climb under the direction of son Ferry, a square-faced man of 46 who owned his first sports car at age 12. Last year he produced 1,908 cars -- including some 1,000 exported to the U.S. -- for a thumping gross of $6,400,000.

There are few plants anywhere that can match the loving care with which a Porsche is built. Every Porsche engine is stamped with the mark of one of the plant's twelve master mechanics, who then assumes permanent responsibility for its performance.

The Stuttgart plant (400 workers, 250 engineers) is currently producing only 300 cars a month, which is far below demand; at last week's show alone, Porsche salesmen took 200 orders. Ferry Porsche doggedly refuses to expand his sports-car output for fear of hurting the quality, but he is tinkering with prototypes of a jeep-type vehicle called "The Hunter," plans eventual production of 500 to 1,000 a month if there is sufficient demand.

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