Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, better known as Butzi, passed away on April 5, 2012. While his death was widely reported, I feel that his real contributions to design were underreported. Butzi Porsche was quietly responsible for three of the most important car designs ever. This might be for purely personal reasons. My first car was one of his designs, a 1974 Porsche 914. However, I think that simply gave me a unique perspective to critique his design thinking.
Car design is a field that has always been dominated by emotional designs. From the sexy lines of a Ferrari to the brutish Hummer, it seems that comparisons to emotion and personalities are never far away in the car industry. However, Butzi Porsche's contributions in the 1960's stand away from that. He consistently avoided showy design affectations like giant wings, scopes, bursting wheels, etc., to focus on a kind of logical and very distinctive styling all his own.
Butzi Porsche was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the engineering genius responsible for the VW Beetle, mid-engined pre-war Auto Union Grand Prix cars and many other incredible and creative automobiles and transport. Butzi worked at Porsche from 1957 until 1972, when the Porsche family pulled out of the day-to-day management of the company. Before that, he studied industrial design for only a year before being dismissed. It could be because his drawing skills were not up to snuff, something he made up for with his model-making ability.
After joining Porsche, Butzi was moved around the company by the design director Karl Rabe. He spent nine months in engine development before moving to the car body division. This gave him a wider vision of design's place at the company, "I was already sure what I was going to do one day. It was definitely to work with the car body in relation to the engine, and in connection with that, the design." A very modernist vision that is as fresh today as it was in the 1960's.
Car design has always been a form before function domain. Up until the 1940's, many luxury car companies didn't even make the body or interior of their cars. That was left to coachbuilders who designed the bodies and interiors around a finished frame. This resulted in beautiful sculpture that contributed nothing to the mechanical functions of the car. Even in 2011, VW's designers developed the Up concept, imagining it was a rear engine vehicle. Without changing the design, the engineers managed to change the Up to a front-engine layout. That's how little design and engineering are considered together in most auto design. As always, Porsche thinks differently.
Butzi's first projects were in the racing department. He worked with the body department to craft the very simple cigar shape of the 1962 Formula 1 car. Then, he worked in tandem on the rebodied production racer, the 356B 2000GS Carrera 2 and his first masterpiece, the 904. Working with the Stuttgart University on aerodynamic models, Porsche found that a chopped roof would reduce lift while maintaining the efficiency of their normal fastback form. Using this knowledge and sculpting the front end of his 904 prototype onto the 356 production car, Porsche created the very awkward, but fast 2000GS Carrera 2. From there, using the same design principles and a clean sheet of paper, Butzi created the sleek, purpose-built 904 race car.
The 904 prototype race car was a rushed project. Porsche retired from F1 after 1962 and wanted to make an impact in the 1963 sports car racing season. Therefore, Butzi and the racing department only had 4 months to design and build the first car. Like all great design, Butzi was forced to start with constraints. In this case, the race organizer's rules constrained the wheelbase, track or width between the tyres, overall length and width as well as certain interior dimensions. The body even needed to accept a regulation specified suitcase in its trunk. Working around these strict constraints, and with the help of an all fiber glass body, Butzi created a lithe and extremely simple body.
Even in the 1960's, race cars normally had odd projections, scopes, holes and grilles peppered over their bodies. Because the 904 had to be quickly frozen to meet the four month deadline, Butzi's sleek design had to be left unaltered by the engineers. The only openings on the 904 were a small linear opening at the front to feed brake cooling and oil coolers, two small openings behind the doors which followed the sloping roof and a grille above the engine which featured a delicate slat grille. Like the other designs that would follow, it wasn't showy. The tires were narrow and tucked into the body, the windscreen stood upright, the form minimized as much as could be. Even the hardware was delicately applied: just a button with the door pull being a recess in the fender to allow the door to be grabbed. Nothing could be added to the design without making it busy and nothing could be taken away without rendering it unsafe or slow.
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