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The Porsche Type 12 was a German project to develop an "Everyman's
It was an early example of the aerodynamic / rounded designs that came somewhat in vogue in the 1930s, developed concurrently with Mercedes-Benz's 120H, and ahead of Tatra's second V570 prototype, and
/ref> In production cars the style was typified by the 1934 Chrysler and
Contemporaneous prototypes with a more extreme focus on aerodynamics were the 1933
The vehicle has a single, U-profile, central beam frame as opposed to the VW Beetle's central tube platform chassis. The car's body (made by Reutter) has – for its time period – a reasonably aerodynamic shape with covered rear wheel arches. Both the front, and the rear axles are leaf sprung and feature a single, transverse leaf spring each. Porsche used a worm-gear steering box and four hydraulic drum brakes on the Type 12. The car already has the VW Beetle-typical drivetrain design with a combined rear gearbox differential unit with the engine directly flanged to its rear end, which means that, the rear axle is a
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...
" (''Auto für Jedermann'') for Zündapp
Zündapp (a.k.a. Zuendapp) was a major German motorcycle manufacturer founded in 1917 in Nuremberg by Fritz Neumeyer, together with the Friedrich Krupp AG and the machine tool manufacturer Thiel under the name "Zünder- und Apparatebau G.m.b.H." ...
. Fritz Neumeyer, then owner of Zündapp, ordered Ferdinand Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche AG. He is best known for creating the first gasoline–electric hybrid vehicle (Lohner–Porsche), the Volkswag ...
to design and build the prototype in 1931. Eventually, two saloons, and one drophead coupé were built. All of those cars were lost during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the last one in a bombing raid in Stuttgart in 1945. The Type 12 is considered an important early step in the development of the original Volkswagen. A replica of the Type 12 is on static display at the '' Museum Industrielkultur'' in Nürnberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ci ...
.
Comparison with contemporary car concepts
It was an early example of the aerodynamic / rounded designs that came somewhat in vogue in the 1930s, developed concurrently with Mercedes-Benz's 120H, and ahead of Tatra's second V570 prototype, and DKW
DKW (''Dampf-Kraft-Wagen'', en, "steam-powered car", also ''Deutsche Kinder-Wagen'' en, "German children's car". ''Das-Kleine-Wunder'', en, "the little wonder" or ''Des-Knaben-Wunsch'', en, "the boy's wish"- from when the company built to ...
's F2-based, one-off rear-engined streamline prototype — both in 1933.DKW Auto-Union Project: DKW's 1933 Rear Engine Streamliner/ref> In production cars the style was typified by the 1934 Chrysler and
DeSoto Airflow
The DeSoto Airflow was an automobile built by DeSoto during model years 1934, 1935 and 1936. DeSoto received the then-revolutionary Airflow model due to its price structure relationship to larger and more expensive Chrysler brand cars. The 1934 Ai ...
, Toyota's AA copy of these (1936), and the eventual "People's car", the 1938 KdF-Wagen aka the Volkswagen Type 1 or ''Beetle''.Contemporaneous prototypes with a more extreme focus on aerodynamics were the 1933
Dymaxion car
The streamlined Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair. Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Star ...
and Karl Schlör's Schlörwagen
The ''Schlörwagen'' (nicknamed "Göttingen Egg" or "Pillbug") was a prototype aerodynamic rear-engine passenger vehicle developed by Karl Schlör (1911–1997) and presented to the public at the 1939 Berlin Auto Show. It never went into producti ...
, developed from 1936 to 1939.Christopher, John. ''The Race for Hitler's X-Planes'' (The Mill, Gloucestershire: History Press, 2013), p.200.
Description
The vehicle has a single, U-profile, central beam frame as opposed to the VW Beetle's central tube platform chassis. The car's body (made by Reutter) has – for its time period – a reasonably aerodynamic shape with covered rear wheel arches. Both the front, and the rear axles are leaf sprung and feature a single, transverse leaf spring each. Porsche used a worm-gear steering box and four hydraulic drum brakes on the Type 12. The car already has the VW Beetle-typical drivetrain design with a combined rear gearbox differential unit with the engine directly flanged to its rear end, which means that, the rear axle is a swing axle
A swing axle is a simple type of independent (rear wheel) suspension designed and patented by Edmund Rumpler in 1903. This was a revolutionary invention in automotive suspension, allowing driven (powered) wheels to follow uneven road surfaces i ...
, located in between the gearbox, and the engine. This was technically feasible because the engine was rather short in length. Unlike the VW Beetle, the Porsche Type 12 has a wet single disc clutch.
The engine is a five-cylinder radial
Radial is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Mathematics and Direction
* Vector (geometric), a line
* Radius, adjective form of
* Radial distance, a directional coordinate in a polar coordinate system
* Radial set
* A bearing f ...
Zündapp-made Otto (spark ignition
A spark-ignition engine (SI engine) is an internal combustion engine, generally a petrol engine, where the combustion process of the air-fuel mixture is ignited by a spark from a spark plug. This is in contrast to compression-ignition engines, ty ...
) engine, rather than the flat four
A flat-four engine, also known as a horizontally opposed-four engine, is a four-cylinder piston engine with two banks of cylinders lying on opposite sides of a common crankshaft. The most common type of flat-four engine is the boxer-four engine, ...
Porsche preferred.Christopher, John. ''The Race for Hitler's X-Planes''. The Mill, Gloucestershire: History Press, 2013, p.200. The five-cylinder Zündapp engine is water-cooled, and has a regular water pump. The camshaft is of the cam drum variety (i. e. a very short camshaft) and actuates two overhead valves
An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...
per cylinder. With its 70 by 62 mm bore and stroke, the engine displaces . It has a compression of ε=5.3, a single Zenith 26 mm carburettor, and produces at 3200/min. The car's top speed is .
Notes
{{Porsche vehicles 1930s cars Cars introduced in 1931 Automobiles powered by radial engines Cars powered by rear-mounted 5-cylinder engines Subcompact cars Type 12