Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

German industrial designer associated with Porsche’s design department from the late 1950s and founder of Porsche Design. Porsche credits him with the Type 754 T7 study, the 901 that became the 911, and the 904 Carrera GTS — the first Porsche with a glass-fibre-reinforced plastic body.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche was born in Stuttgart on 11 December 1935, the eldest son of Dorothea and Ferry Porsche. The family and Porsche company moved to Austria in 1943, and he attended school in Zell am See. After the 1950 return to Stuttgart, he finished school at the Waldorf School, studied at Ulm for two semesters, and began a Porsche modelling-department internship in 1957. He joined the company as a designer in 1958.

In 1959 he modelled a coupé that Porsche said first came close to Ferry’s idea of a 356 successor. The Type 754 T7 four-seater of 1960 showed the flattened bonnet between free-standing wings; Ferry insisted on a fastback and cut the wheelbase from 2.40 metres to 2.20. Porsche’s later accounts disagree on the first year of his leadership: the company’s 2025 biographies place him in charge of a new design department by 1961, whereas Porsche-derived notices from 2010 and 2012 say 1962.

In 1963, the Type 901, the six-cylinder successor to the 356, appeared at the Frankfurt IAA on 12 September. It became the 911 after Peugeot asserted rights to three-digit model names with a zero in the middle; Ferry ordered the change on 22 October 1964.

The 904 Carrera GTS is directly credited to F. A. Porsche by the Porsche Museum. It was the first Porsche with a glass-fibre-reinforced plastic body, created in collaboration with Heinkel Flugzeugbau, and had a frontal area of 1.4 square metres. It premiered at Solitude in Stuttgart on 26 November 1963. At the 1964 Targa Florio, Antonio Pucci and Colin Davis won overall in a four-cylinder 904; Edgar Barth and Umberto Maglioli won the prototype class in an eight-cylinder 904.

When Porsche KG became an AG in 1971/72, family members left operational posts. He kept a Supervisory Board seat but had to give up the design chair. In 1972 he and Hans-Peter founded Porsche Design in Stuttgart; the studio moved to Zell am See in 1974. He chaired the Supervisory Board from 1990 to 1993 and in 2005 handed his seat to his son Oliver, becoming Honorary President. He died in Salzburg on 5 April 2012.