BREAKING NEW GROUND
Construction work at Porsche’s famous Weissach Development Centre began exactly fifty years ago. In coming issues of 911 & Porsche World, we’ll take a look at some of the lesser known engineering achievements carried out at the site. In advance, here’s a
50 YEARS OF WEISSACH
Five decades of ground-breaking R&D.
Aplace where engineering and enthusiasm have always gone hand in hand. Where visions are born and every model is developed completely from scratch. From the initial idea to the finished design. From the very first touch to the final test drive. From the race-bred sports car to the thoroughbred race car. No matter where Porsche builds a vehicle, it is always designed in Weissach, but how did the art of engineering find a home in this small town between Stuttgart and Pforzheim?
By 1960, with 356 production in full swing, Ferry Porsche needed a test track. Public roads were getting busier and, much to his frustration, Volkswagen’s proving ground was some distance away (eighteen kilometres outside Wolfsburg, to be exact). Porsche needed plenty of space to carry out comprehensive practical tests, and dictated the need to build a large skid pan, taking the form of an endless curve with a diameter of just under two-hundred metres (with smaller sixty and forty-metre radius loops designed within). Works racing driver, Herbert Linge, caught wind of the plan and recommended his home town of Weissach, surrounded by vast, open fields which were only moderately suitable for agriculture. It was a hot tip — just twenty-five kilometres away from the built-up environs of Zuffenhausen, Weissach was an ideal match for Porsche’s expansion plans.
The chief negotiator with the mayors of Weissach and the neighbouring commune of Flacht was Ferry Porsche’s private secretary, Ghislaine Kaes, who secured a deal for an impressive thirtyeight hectare site, gaining final approval from the Regional Council in September 1960. Construction work began a year later, with the aforementioned skid pan taking priority. The first laps were driven on it in 1962.
A near two-mile track (complete with a near mile-long straight) designed by factory engineer, Helmuth Bott, was completed in 1967, and within two years, Porsche’s research, development and design departments were gearing up for relocation to Weissach, occupying purpose-built facilities erected piece by piece while the proving ground continued evolving. And evolve it did: a smaller, faster circuit was opened in 1971, perfect for developing the 917’s turbocharging technology in readiness for its dominance of the Can-am series
following victories at Le Mans in 1970 and 1971. A mountain course with narrow curves was also opened.
The blank canvas Porsche enjoyed when building its Development Centre at Weissach meant no compromises were made when it came to installing the very latest in automotive testing equipment, all with a view to pushing the limit of prototype race cars in the hunt for continued motorsport success, which would result in advances in technology filtering down to Porsche production cars. The 917 is a good example of this: in 1972, in an effort to eke out even greater performance from the 917’s twelve-cylinder motor, the unit was equipped with twin turbochargers. Valves were used to regulate the injected pressure and prevent overcharge. A year later, this technology was moved to series production, culminating in the 911 Turbo (930), which benefited from further forced induction technology (taking form of an intercooler in 1977) as a consequence of race car testing at Weissach. Perhaps more famous was the sequential turbocharging system developed at Weissach and fitted to the 959 in readiness for the model’s reveal in 1985. Two complementary turbos were used (instead of a single snail shaped bhp booster), each covering a different boost range. Feared ‘turbo gap’ was finally a thing of the past and sequential turbocharging is now a staple of high performance sports car manufacturing the world over.
There was, however, a fly in the ointment. Porsche had enjoyed a steady stream of income from Volkswagen, serving as technical partner on various projects, from design to engineering, and was using much of this income to finance research at Weissach, as well as continued investment in the venue’s maintenance, upgrades and new infrastructure. A change in personnel at board level in Wolfsburg called time on the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between Porsche and VW, leaving Porsche to carry the can for much of the 914’s development costs and the need to drag the 912 out of retirement as a replacement for the Stuttgart brand’s entry level offering. With funds from VW coming to a swift halt, the wizards at Weissach needed to open up the site to other companies for testing and research beyond race car development.
Helmuth Bott once again stepped up, establishing a dedicated crash test centre, a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and a then modern engine and exhaust gas testing facility at Weissach, all of which proved inviting to a range of major manufacturers and, obviously, were of huge importance to the development of safety systems for Porsche’s own products. The money began rolling in again. Bott and his colleagues continually reinvested it in Weissach.
When the 959 was ready for launch (such was the massive cost of developing the model, Porsche lost money on every unit sold, though Bott would later acknowledge the sensational supercar’s importance in paving the
BUILDINGS CONTINUED TO BE ERECTED AT WEISSACH, WITH EXPONENTIAL GROWTH RESULTING IN SOME 6,500 EMPLOYEES OCCUPYING THE SITE TODAY
way for the technology introduced to Porsche’s entire range of vehicles from the late 1980s onward), Porsche was riding high on the fact its engines were conquering F1. Under the Porsche Engineering banner, design studies were being carried out for the aviation and military industries, as well as for automotive manufacturers both in and outside of the VAG stable. We’ll take a look at some of this work in forthcoming issues of 911 & Porsche World, suffice to say, when sales of Porsche’s production cars slowed toward the end of the decade, and when Zuffenhausen’s assembly lines were deemed to be in need of complete overhaul, it was Bott’s efforts to ensure Weissach served a wide range of clients in an equally wide range of engineering disciplines which kept the company afloat and enabled the development of new technologies that would result in the cost-saving design and assembly of the Boxster and 996 on the same production lines.
Buildings continued to be erected at Weissach, with exponential growth resulting in some 6,500 employees (5,000 of them working for Porsche and 1,500 employed by the brand’s partner companies) occupying the site today. R&D, motorsports, purchasing and administrative support are all taken care of from this vast, sprawling centre of engineering excellence. The buildings are placed close to one another, with narrow connecting streets snaking between them. The test track now has a variety of dynamic and ‘torture’ routes, as well as the small but fine circular circuit, and after a €150,000,000 investment programme in 2014, the entire site was renovated, marked by the arrival of a new design studio, a new “electronics integration centre”, a fresh wind tunnel and a new engine testing facility, all in recognition of an expanded Porsche product range and the brand’s continued status as the most profitable manufacturer in the world (when measured on a per unit basis).
Porsche Engineering’s subcontract work for third party carmakers and established companies away from the automotive world continues apace. When asked about the importance of the Weissach Development Centre, back when its headcount was a third of what it is today, Bott remarked, “if you want to build sports cars and push envelopes, you have to be capable of the kind of research that pushes limits”. Mission well and truly accomplished. l