
The First Car to Bear the Porsche Name - jkuria
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-does-an-the-worlds-first-porsche-drive-lets-find-out-11564756570?mod=rsswn
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wcdolphin
“Fuel Economy: 20 mpg, mixed driving (est.)” Crazy to think of how little
progress we’ve made on that end, assuming the reporting is accurate.

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gambiting
Have we? Modern diesels easily get 60-70mpg(49-58 US mpg) without even trying,
and modern petrols are not much worse - I recently drove a small VW Polo with
a 1.2L I4 90bhp petrol engine, fully loaded with luggage, and averaged
54mpg(45 US mpg) over 600 miles. Even my own Mercedes-AMG with 381bhp can
easily average 32-35mpg(26-29 US mpg) when driven on longer trips.

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systemtest
The diesel comparison is perhaps not entirely fair. The density of diesel is
about 833 kg/m3 compared to 740 kg/m3 for gasoline. This gives diesel about
13% higher energy density per volume.

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gambiting
Sure, that's why I gave two petrol examples as well.

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durnygbur
Was it stolen Tatra, or Nazi military vehicle?

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mosselman
I tried finding out about Ferdinand Porsche some more and I doubt he needed to
steal a design for a car, seeing as he has had a highly successful career as
an automobile engineer after the war, even winning the 'Car Engineer of the
Century' (according to Wikipedia). That is not saying that he didn't steal
anything, but I am saying that he had a certain ability. Also, the line
between inspiration and stealing in creative pursuits is quite thin.

The 'Nazi' part of your remark does make sense as a valid critique. Then
again, many innovations have come out of war and he did go to prison. Although
on Wikipedia we can read:

> The innovative 4WD design never raced, but the money it received was used to
> redeem Ferdinand Porsche from prison.

It feels odd that you can redeem yourself out of prison for taking part in
some of humanity's worst crimes. Then again, there are recent examples of
horrific crimes against humanity that go unpunished in order to make profits
as well, so it is the norm apparently.

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jaclaz
I don't know, of course, but the Typ12 was created (just) before the Tatra
V570 (second prototype, the first looked very different):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Type_12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Type_12)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_V570](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_V570)

and it seems like both Porsche and Ledwinka worked at Steyr so it is very
possible that some earlier Ledwinka project at Steyr "inspired" Porsche, and
possibly also viceversa, in any case they had very similar education and
experience in overlapping years.

I find more probable that this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ledwinka#Volkswagen_contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ledwinka#Volkswagen_controversy)

> In any case, of Ledwinka, Porsche admitted "Well, sometimes I looked over
> his shoulder and sometimes he looked over mine"

is actually accurate.

