1875, the small town of Maffersdorf in Bohemia. A 15-year-old boy plays with electrical wires in the family basement while his parents sleep. Upstairs, no one suspects that this budding tinkerer has just built an electric generator that will transform their house into the first electrified home in the village. This kid is Ferdinand Porsche, and I can tell you that he had no idea that he would revolutionize the global automobile industry.

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Because when we think of Porsche today, we imagine the racing cars, the legendary 911s , but the story begins long before that. It begins with a self-taught genius who couldn't even afford university, but who would still create the world's best-selling car and lay the foundations for what would become one of the most prestigious car brands on the planet.

So sit back, because the story of Ferdinand Porsche is that of a man who lived several lives in one : electric pioneer, creator of the Beetle, motor racing revolutionary, and unfortunately also a collaborator with the Nazi regime. A life of absolute contrasts that deserves to be explored.

The first sparks of genius

Ferdinand was born in 1875 in this small town in Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic. His father, Anton Porsche, was a simple plumber and zinc worker, and frankly, nothing predestined this kid to revolutionize anything. But hey, genius doesn't give you any warning .

From his teenage years, Ferdinand showed an obsession with electricity that bordered on illness. I swear, this kid spent his evenings taking apart everything he could get his hands on to understand how it worked. And when he was 15, he said to himself: "Hey, what if I lit up the family shack?" He tinkered with his homemade electric generator, and lo and behold, the Porsches became the first in the village to have electricity . His parents must have thought they had given birth to a little wizard.

But the problem is money. The Porsche family doesn't have a dime to send Ferdinand to study engineering. So the kid, as smart as a monkey, decides to secretly attend classes at the University of Vienna. Yeah, you heard right, he slipped into lecture halls without paying, took his notes, and went home to continue his experiments. Self-taught genius, as they say.

First revolution: electric before its time

And this is where it gets crazy. In 1898, at just 23 years old, Ferdinand landed a job at Lohner, a Viennese coachbuilder. And guess what? He created his first electric car . Not a small electric cart, no, a real racing car that reached over 100 km/h at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris.

Wait, it gets even crazier. This Ferdinand, he invented the electric wheel motor . You know, those little motors built directly into the wheels? Well, imagine that 70 years later, NASA would use his invention to create the lunar rover! I repeat: his 1900 invention ended up on the Moon. Not bad for a Bohemian kid who was sneaking around school, eh?

And as if that weren't enough, he also invented the first hybrid car in history with the Lohner-Porsche. Gasoline and electric combined. In 1900! When I think that we congratulate ourselves today for having invented the hybrid with Toyota in the 90s...

The visionary entrepreneur

But Ferdinand wasn't just a genius tinkerer. He was also an entrepreneur who knew how to surround himself with the right people. In 1931, at the age of 55, he took the plunge and founded his own design office : Dr. Ing. hc F. Porsche GmbH. You'll notice the "Dr." before his name, because even without a formal degree, he eventually earned an honorary doctorate. Not bad for a self-taught man!

And there, he demonstrated extraordinary flair for recruiting. He surrounded himself with a dream team : Karl Rabe as chief engineer and right-hand man, Erwin Komenda on design, Franz Xaver Reimspiess on engines, and of course his son Ferry, who would soon prove that he had inherited his father's genius.

You know what amazes me the most? He managed to put together this team in the middle of the Great Depression . In 1931, the global economy was struggling, everyone was tightening their belts, and he recruited the best engineers of the time! You had to believe it.

The revolution of motor racing

And then Ferdinand had another obsession: pure speed . In the 1930s, he designed the Auto Union racing cars with a revolutionary trick: the V16 engine placed in the center-rear. At the time, everyone put the engine in the front, but he said, "No, we're going to do it differently."

The result? These German "Silver Arrows" completely dominated international motor racing. They racked up victory after victory, and Ferdinand imposed his vision of the modern racing car. An approach which, incidentally, remains the benchmark in Formula 1 to this day.

By the way, a juicy little anecdote : during his military service in 1902, Ferdinand served as a chauffeur to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. You know, the one whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 triggered the First World War? Imagine the irony: the man who would revolutionize the automobile drove the central figure who plunged Europe into chaos...

The Call of Destiny: The People's Car

Well, this is where we get to the most famous, but also the most complicated, part of Ferdinand's story. In 1933, Hitler put out a call for tenders to create a "people's car"—a Volkswagen in German. The specifications? A car capable of transporting four people at 100 km/h, for less than 1,000 marks. In other words, mission impossible.

Ferdinand, always looking for the ultimate challenge, stepped up to the plate . He studied the assembly lines of Ford and General Motors in the United States to understand how to mass produce at low cost. And there, he pulled a little engineering gem out of his hat: the future Beetle.

You know what's crazy? This slightly odd little car, with its air-cooled engine at the rear, would become the most produced car in the world . More than 21 million units! And to think that at the time, everyone found its design bizarre...

The other Ferdinand: when the automobile reaches the stars

But anyway, I want to come back to this story of the electric wheel motor, because frankly, it fascinates me . Imagine: in 1900, Ferdinand Porsche invented something that would be used by NASA 70 years later to go to the Moon! His invention literally touched the stars.

And you know what? All this time, we're talking about electric cars in 2025 as if it were revolutionary , but Ferdinand already had it all figured out over a century ago. If we had listened to him, we might all have been driving electric cars long ago!

That's exactly why I opened my shop BernardMiniatures.fr, by the way. Because these stories of visionary engineers like Ferdinand Porsche fascinate me. I have more than 1,500 miniatures in stock, mainly 1/43 scale, with models that tell all these automotive epics. Beetles, of course, but also racing Porsches, electric prototypes from the 2000s... A bit of everything that testifies to this genius of automotive engineering.

Delivery is free for orders over €75 in France, and I take care to package each miniature like a little treasure, because that's what they are: witnesses to history. If you're interested, take a look at bernardminiatures.fr; you'll see there's plenty to dream about.

30,00 € / Porsche 356 A Speedster Red - DetailCars Collection Reference 222

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30,00 € / Porsche 356 A Cabriolet Light Brown - DetailCars Collection Reference 225

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30,00 € / Porsche 356 A Speedster Grey - Detailcars Collection

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25,00 € / 1968 White Porsche 911S - Auto Plus

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Now, let's get back to our Ferdinand and the darkest part of his story...

The Dark Years

Because, well, we can't tell the story of Ferdinand Porsche without addressing his collaboration with the Nazi regime . In 1937, he became a member of the Nazi Party and even achieved the rank of Oberführer of the SS. During the war, he developed heavy tanks like the VK 45.01, nicknamed "Ferdinand," and his factories used deported workers.

This is reality, and it's ugly. It doesn't excuse anything , but you have to understand the context: at the time, refusing to cooperate with the regime was signing your professional death warrant, or worse. Ferdinand was an engineer obsessed with his projects, not a resistance fighter. That doesn't exonerate him, but it helps to understand.

Imprisonment and transmission

In 1945, the war ended, and Ferdinand found himself imprisoned in France . The French even forced him to work on the Renault 4CV! Imagine the irony: the creator of the German Beetle forced to work on a small French car...

But meanwhile, his son Ferry kept the business afloat. And here's a **new great story**: when Ferdinand Sr. was imprisoned, it was thanks to the fees from a contract for a Cisitalia racing car (which ultimately never raced!) that Ferry managed to pay the one million French franc bail to secure his father's release on August 1, 1947. The automobile was literally saving the family!

And here is perhaps the most moving moment of the whole story: when Ferdinand discovers the plans for the first real Porsche, the 356, which Ferry developed during his imprisonment, he remains silent for a long time. Then he lets out this now legendary phrase: "I wouldn't have changed a single screw."

The master recognized his worthy successor. The transmission was made .

The Eternal Legacy

Ferdinand Porsche died in 1951 at the age of 75, just after the first Porsche 356 was built. He left behind an empire that Ferry would later transform into a legend. In 1996, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame, and in 1999, he was named "Automotive Engineer of the Century." Not bad for a self-taught kid from Bohemia!

But you know what strikes me most about this story? It's that Ferdinand Porsche was a man of absolute contrasts . A brilliant visionary and collaborator with a despicable regime. A pioneer of electricity and creator of war tanks. A brilliant autodidact and a shrewd businessman.

Lessons from a Genius

I think that in the end, Ferdinand Porsche teaches us several things. First, that genius can be born anywhere , even in a modest Bohemian family. Second, that innovation knows no time: his ideas about electric vehicles were right, just 100 years too early.

But above all, his story reminds us that great men are not saints . They are human, with their greatness and their weaknesses. Ferdinand created marvels of engineering, but he also made morally questionable choices. History is never all black or all white.

And then there's this father-son transmission that particularly touches me. Ferry Porsche wasn't just "the son of," he was a talented engineer and entrepreneur who knew how to take over at the right time . When Ferdinand told him he wouldn't have changed a single screw on the 356, it was more than a compliment: it was recognition that he had created a worthy heir.

Today, when we see a Porsche on the road, we think sport, luxury, and performance. But behind that logo lies the story of a 15-year-old boy lighting up his house in the depths of Bohemia. There's the story of a self-taught man who invented the hybrid before gasoline was even truly available. There's the story of a visionary who already envisioned the electric car when the world was barely discovering the internal combustion engine.

Ferdinand Porsche was all of these things : a precocious genius, a revolutionary inventor, a shrewd entrepreneur, a collaborator with the worst regime in history, and ultimately a father who knew how to pass on his passion to his son. A life of contrasts that perfectly sums up the complexity of the 20th-century automotive adventure.

And when I hold a miniature Beetle or 356 in my hands, I tell myself that these little cars carry all this history within them. They are silent witnesses to an era when automotive engineering had no limits, when a single man could revolutionize an entire industry.

This is Ferdinand Porsche's legacy: showing us that in the automotive industry, anything is possible when you have genius and audacity . Even if sometimes, audacity leads us down paths we would prefer never to have taken.