911 hero: August Achleitner
‘Mr 911’ is retiring, but before he does, August Achleitner gives one last interview to Kyle Fortune
The man affectionately known as ‘Mr 911’ is retiring. Kyle Fortune is given the privilege of his last interview
April first. April Fools’ Day. A hugely significant day for Porsche, and specifically the 911, as August Achleitner will close his office door at Porsche for the last time, handing the keys over to Frank-steffen Walliser. Achleitner’s business cards might say ‘Vice President Product Line 911 and 718’, but he’s long been referred to simply as ‘Mr 911’.
He opened the door to that office 18 years ago on 1 April 2001, Dr Dürheimer giving him the job of looking after Porsche’s most famous model.
His leaving is arguably as seismic a change as many of the key points in the 911’s development, Achleitner overseeing the water-cooled era of Porsche, starting with the 996 and signing off with the recently launched 992.
You don’t walk straight into a job where you’re responsible for the model that defines a brand. No, when Achleitner removes his nameplate from the door he’ll have been at Porsche for 35 years. It was perhaps inevitable that Achleitner would work for Porsche. He is the son of a vehicle engineer, born in Cologne, Germany, to Austrian parents, while his father was working for Ford before moving to BMW.
The young Achleitner studied engineering in Munich while his father worked at BMW, Achleitner adding economics to his curriculum in a bid to ensure his eventual career path didn’t follow the normal route. “I saw which kind of jobs my former colleagues of my engineering studies had at BMW, and I thought to myself, I don’t agree with that. It’s too small to be responsible for the left door handle. That’s not my target.”
The engineer wouldn’t, of course, start at the top of Porsche, but his ambition and talent undoubtedly dictated his successful career path. He admits always wanting to work for the company, saying: “I was always a Porsche fan, from my childhood. When I joined I was only in engineering because of my additional studies in chassis; I did five years in chassis development.” A neighbour having a bright-red 356 when he was growing up might have influenced him, too.
His first role was with Porsche Engineering, the company’s offshoot that quietly undertakes work for other manufacturers. “At the beginning I had many projects for customers, because Porsche was always doing customer development at that time, more so than today,” says Achleitner. He admits during this period to being kept busy by BMW, doing some work for Audi and others and also travelling to Detroit to work with Pontiac.
Porsche’s own projects started taking over Achleitner’s time, his first work on the 911 relating the brakes. “The only part which I designed and drew by myself that made it to production was the new brake disc off the 964 Turbo,” chuckles Achleitner, admitting that every time he sees one he thinks, ‘I did that’.
A visible contribution there, albeit through the wheel spokes, but it would be what was behind the 964 replacement’s brake discs that would help define Achleitner’s career path. Achleitner was one of the engineers responsible for the Lightweight Stable Agile (LSA), or ‘Weissach’ axle introduced with the 993. It had been developed in part for the shelved 989 four-door Porsche, the multi-link rear axle being transformational in helping add some predictability to the 911’s dynamic behaviour.
That basic rear-axle concept remains to this day, Achleitner saying it’s under the 992, adding: “It’s always a little bit improved, but it’s the same concept. No big changes. With the 993, the driving characteristic of this car was okay, and of course, later on, we added electronic
controls.” That would be Achleitner’s last job in pure chassis development, leaving to take over the newly formed department for whole packaging and vehicle concepts. “The department had not existed before, and I was able to take over after only half a year. So, from about 1989 to 2000,
I was the head of this department. During this phase we created the concepts of the Boxster and the 996 with all these common parts and concepts. I worked on the concept of the Cayenne, and my last project within this department was the Carrera GT.”
Porsche engineers only occasionally let their emotions take over their rational side, but almost universally within the company the Carrera GT evokes a base response. Achleitner isn’t immune: “There’s still a lot of hard blood from myself within this car, and I love it.” It’s not the only mid-engined car he’s affectionate about either. Achleitner has headed up the 718 product line for a few years now, saying: “Since 2016 the 718 product line had been integrated with mine. It had been a separate one. We wanted to keep the total number of product lines as four. This is also a thing that I’m a little bit proud of, because the integration for the 718 guys into my department, it just worked from one day to the other. I did not expect it to work so fast and so well, and I’m really happy about it.”
Achleitner’s additional studies in economics would prove instrumental in his role at Porsche, as the company was undergoing pivotal changes under then-porsche president and
CEO Wendelin Wiedeking. “Wiedeking changed almost everything. In the beginning of the 1990s, the guy who was designing any part of the car, he did not know what this part costs, whether in development costs or in investment or in material costs. And from one day to the other, it was completely changed. These experts knew everything about the costs so that they could optimise the parts also from the financial point of view.”
Achleitner admits that this needed to be done, saying when he arrived at the company he was shocked at how behind its rivals it was, and how little affection there was among some for the 911. “When I started at Porsche in 1983, the 911 wasn’t an icon at that time. It had been in competition with the 928 and with the 944, especially 944 Turbo, which was really fast, and at that time definitely the better car. With the 911 they had no progress – the G model had been produced for such a long time, and they just made slight modifications to it.”
“At that time we got a new board member, Mr Wiedeking, responsible for the whole organisation and marketing, and he brought some colleagues with him also, all coming from BMW. The first thing – I will never forget it – the first thing they said to us: ‘First of all, Porsche is such a big brand, so important. Everybody in the world knows Porsche. And there’s such huge capital. The wealth is so big you cannot imagine. The second thing is you offer the 911. This is a car which is completely different to every other car in the world, and nobody else has such a car.’”
That would, says Achleitner, be the catalyst to realising the value of the 911, and developing it: “We understood it even more, the necessity to have and progress with development for the 911. We made it better from generation to generation, and now it’s perfect. Without these guys coming from BMW, most likely this would have not taken place.” He adds: “When I came to Porsche the 911 was not an icon. This car had existed for 20 years at that time. Now we have a little bit more than 20 years with the Boxster. It is still not an icon. But I say it’s on the way to becoming one.”
There’s room for that, says Achleitner, but at the core of the brand remains the 911, even among the SUVS, Panamera and the soon-to-bereleased Taycan plug-in electric car. The Taycan raises an interesting point for Mr 911. Asked whether he sees the likelihood of an all-electric
911, he’s warmed to the idea. “If you would have asked me this question two years ago, I would have said I could not imagine an electric 911. In the meantime I had the chance to drive the Taycan several times, and it is fascinating. After our twodoor sports cars, the Taycan is the sportiest car within the company. I could imagine having some fun with an electric 911. Of course, you will miss the sound of the flat six, which is very typical. But it is not everything. It starts when you open the door, sit into the car, adjust your seat and your steering column. And then you feel, oh, I’m at home. I sit in my 911.”
His own 911, and retirement present to himself, is a 991.2 GT3, PDK: “I love this PDK because it’s shifting the gears so fast and so emotional, you cannot do it with a manual,” he says. He enjoys driving on the mountain roads around his holiday home in Austria’s Tyrol. He bought the GT3 in August last year, and it’s parked in his garage alongside several motorcycles and a 2015 GTS. They’ll all get some use when he leaves, Achleitner planning on taking his limited-edition Ducati Panigale for some track training, and his KTMS offroad and touring with his wife. The Panigale is build number 911 of the series, that possible because Achleitner counts the boss of Ducati among his personal friends.
If he’s not riding his motorcycles or driving the GT3 he’ll be on skis, running or mountain biking, all passions he’ll have the time to indulge. He’s off to see Bob Dylan play in Innsbruck in April. He’s looking forward to all of that, especially as he had initially intended to leave at the end of December. With Porsche being so busy he stayed on a while longer before his successor Frank-steffen Walliser takes over.
That did mean he had a leaving party early before he actually left, his staff organising an event at the end of December in the workshop at the Porsche Museum. “They placed all cars which I had been involved in, including the Carrera GT, 996, 997, 991 first and second generation,
992 and 718 – the last one. And this was really a pleasure for me,” says Achleitner. Afterwards he spent the afternoon building a 992’s flat six, that counting as fun if you’re an engineer.
And favourites, other than that Carrera
GT? Achleitner betrays the engineer in himself, saying: “Always the newest 911.” There’s some affection for the 997, because it was the first he was responsible for in its entirety. He remembers, too, how it defied the conventional styling route, which usually sees eight models being made before choosing four, and then working down to a final design.
“We had a completely different way of starting for the 997 at that time. We rented a small study studio in Los Angeles with the designer, Grant Larson,” says Achleitner. “It was really funny. They had exactly one model, and Grant just made this car out of his mind. He knew exactly how the 997 should look, and so we made exactly one study model, nothing else. This model was then carried over to Germany and presented to the board.
Only some small modifications were required in the roof area because we wanted to take over the roof systems from the 996 to the 997.” Achleitner admits that pulling the covers off the 997 and seeing the reaction of the public, journalists and customers was a high point in a career spanning Porsche’s most successful years.
He won’t be a stranger to Porsche when he eventually leaves. He’ll continue to consult when asked and, having been so entwined in the 911’s history, there’ll always be demands from the press department for him. His two sons, like him, followed their father into engineering, one working for Porsche and the other having worked at Porsche but now working within the wider group at Audi. “It’s interesting, especially my younger son, because he’s working in the concept department at Porsche and my father has been head of the concept department at BMW,” says Achleitner, engineering evidently being strong in the family bloodline.
His wife enjoys driving too, having taken part in Porsche’s performance training experience in a Cayman S, humbling many of the other attendees in GT3S. Achleitner laughs proudly, saying the guys in the group were overheard commenting: “That Cayman is quite fast.”
He’s fairly pragmatic about leaving, likening it to the end of studying – interesting and enjoyable, but now it’s over. “I have done this job now for such a long time, and now it’s enough. I hand over to Frank and, of course, all our colleagues, and they shall solve the problems of the future.” He admits it’s an exciting time for those he’s leaving behind, saying: “This space right now is, from the technical point of view, even more interesting than the last 10 years because there are so many changes, and you have to find new solutions. It’s a big challenge for the engineers, and a challenge for engineers is always interesting.”
No question, but as Achleitner himself says of the 911: “We have been producing this strange concept for more than 50 years, and in the meantime, we understood it.” Engineering, and engineers, are at the company’s absolute core. If any company can work out solutions for the future then Porsche is it, and Achleitner has been instrumental in the ascendancy of the 911 to the icon it is today. For that we can all be hugely grateful, and wish ‘Mr 911’ a happy retirement.
“Two years ago I would have said I could not imagine an electric 911”