Ferdinand Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian-German automotive engineer whose designs shaped both civilian and military vehicles across the first half of the twentieth century. Early in his career he built the Lohner-Porsche, one of the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, and he later designed Auto Union grand prix racing cars that dominated European motorsport in the 1930s. Under a 1934 government contract he designed the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the best-selling car designs in history, and founded the engineering consultancy that became the sports car maker Porsche. Porsche joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS, rising to the rank of SS-Oberfuhrer, and during the Second World War he designed German military vehicles including the Tiger I, Tiger II and Elefant tanks, work that relied in part on forced labor at Volkswagen's wartime factories, a record that remains the subject of continued historical scrutiny. He received the German National Prize for Art and Science in 1938 and was posthumously named Car Engineer of the Century in 1999.