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 ...

founded his company ''Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratungen für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau'' (

Porsche Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...

) in April 1931 in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

. The company established a numeric record of projects known as the Type List. Initially, the list was maintained by

Karl Rabe Karl Rabe (29 October 1895, Pottendorf, Austria - 28 October 1968) was an automobile designer and was the Chief Designer at Porsche. He helped Ferdinand Porsche Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-Ge ...

. The first number was Type 7, chosen so that Wanderer-Werke AG did not realize they were the company's first customer. The first entries in the list are designs by Ferdinand Porsche before the company was founded and therefore these do not have a Type number. The designs up to number 287 are from the period leading into

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 ...

when the company was based in

. Type number 288 is the first of the Gmünd period where the company was relocated as part of the program to disperse companies outside big cities to prevent damage from the Allied strategic bombing campaign. In 1950 the company moved back to Stuttgart and makes a new start with Type 500, skipping a large part of the 400 range. Most numbers in this range are used up to the point where the initial designation for the 911 was chosen: number 901, skipping a large part of the 800 range. At this stage the practice of allocating a separate number to each component design (e.g. chassis, gearbox or engine) was abandoned and the 3-digit numbers are used for entire projects. At the start of the 900 range, the external customer projects receive a 4-digit number. More recently many new models have received alpha-numeric codes to fit with the VW-Group nomenclature.

References

{{Porsche vehicles Porsche