Mallett’s mental meanderings
MALLETT GOES IN SEARCH OF HIS ROOTS AND WONDERS IF HE MIGHT BE RELATED TO GENGHIS KAHN – OR A VIKING WARRIOR. WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH PORSCHES? YOU MAY WELL ASK…
I’ve just sent off one of those ancestry DNA kits to discover my genetic make up. Chances are that there might be a bit of Genghis Khan as it seems that at least 16 million men alive today are descended from the scourge of Asia. If so it would make me a so-called Genghisid. It’s more likely however that, being a Mallett by birth, I might have a touch of Norse or Viking blood. William the Conqueror arrived on our shores with a posse of Norman dukes, one of whom was a certain William Malet. (What’s an ‘L’ or ‘T’ or two between friends?) Apart from his properties in Normandy, Malet soon owned quite a lot of England’s green and pleasant land, with estates in Yorkshire and East Anglia. So I might be overdue an inheritance!
DNA has become a well-used cliché in the automotive world – a snappier and far more emotive descriptor for what we used to call heritage, history or pedigree; conjuring a vision of a double helix stretching from the very first iteration of a marque through every generation and model to the tin box that you are currently driving, irrespective of how many changes of corporate structure and ownership may have taken place en-route.
Porsche and Audi have just announced that they are developing a shared platform for a new generation of electric vehicles. In human terms that’s a bit like first cousins marrying – generally not against the law but genetically ill advised. However, in the auto world it has long made economic sense to share development costs across various models and has existed as a principle from the earliest days of the horseless carriage. Many of the very first automobile brands, of which there were many hundreds, bought in their engines from the likes of Benz or Peugeot. The very first Porsches, of course, used Volkswagen components, engine crankcases, gearboxes and running gear, a fact of which Jeremy Clarkson persists in reminding us to this day.
Porsche’s DNA, in the sense that the marketing men use, is based on success on the world’s racing tracks which has always been at the core of the brand’s image even though the larger proportion of Porsches are now SUVS.
Although in biological terms DNA stretches back into the primordial soup, as far as brand Porsche is concerned it begins with Professor Ferdinand Porsche. Unlike many other car brands his engineering genes persisted within the company long after his death, first with son Ferry and grandson Butzi, but also most notoriously through the Piéch line of his daughter Louise. And although VW now owns Porsche the Porsche/piéch clans are the majority shareholders in Porsche SE the majority shareholders in VW. Don’t worry, I can’t follow it either!
Porsche’s close relationship with VW down the years has repeatedly mingled each company’s DNA. The 914 couldn’t make up its mind who to claim as a parent. Originally planned as non-identical twins, the four-cylinder version was to be marketed as a VW and the six-cylinder as a Porsche but under pressure from the US both were sold there as Porsches, while European cars were badged Vw-porsches. Despite the four-cylinder 914’s sales success purists muttered ‘not a real Porsche.’
The 924 was another Vw/porsche love child, disowned by one parent before its birth. Intended as a top of the range sports model for VW and an entry level model for Porsche, VW bailed out of the deal leaving Porsche holding the baby. The 924 also incorporated another strand of DNA in the form of an Audi-sourced engine. On top of that it was built in the NSU factory for whom Professor Porsche had designed a rear engined proto-volkswagen in 1932.
In 1989 Porsche cooperated with Mercedes-benz to redesign the chassis for an uprated 5.0-litre V8 version of the Mercedes 500 E saloon. They also ended up assembling the car in a complicated shuttle service between
Zuffenhausen and
Sindelfingen – over 10,000 were built in all. The Prof had been employed full time at Mercedes-benz between 1923 and 1929 where he was responsible for the race winning SSK. As a consultant in 1939 his bureau also created their extraordinary sixwheeled aero-engined T-80 record car.
Immediately after the 500E Audi embarked on a similar double act with Porsche, the result of which was the stunning Audi RS2 Avant estate. The S2 was powered by a turbocharged fivecylinder engine, heavily modified by Porsche.
The five-cylinder engine was championed at Audi by Piéch, who joined them in 1972 after his productive but disruptive stint at Porsche. Porsche’s connection with Audi stretched back to 1933 when the Professor was commissioned by Auto Union, the just-formed conglomerate that included Audi, Horch, DKW and Wanderer, to design their fabled Grand Prix cars. (The newly formed Porsche Design Bureau’s first commission was from Wanderer in 1930 for a six-cylinder car.)
The Cayenne was the result of a joint venture with VW whose version emerged as the Touareg and also the Audi Q7, and so it goes on. We may be rapidly approaching an age of one size fits all. By the time that Piéch became overall boss of VW his buying spree had spread the group’s DNA through Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Skoda.
And talking of that prolific inseminator Genghis Kahn, Piéch also ensured his personal Deoxyribonucleic acid was widely spread, fathering no fewer than 12 children with four different women – one of whom was married to a Porsche!
“PORSCHE’S DNA IS BASED ON RACING SUCCESS…”