Thursday Trivia

Welcome to Thursday Trivia where we offer up a historical automotive trivia question and you try and solve it before seeing the answer after the jump. It’s like a history test, with cars! This week’s question: What were the two primary reasons for Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, and his son Ferry’s, 1937 trip to America?   If you think you know the reasons for the seasons, make the jump and see if you are correct. The story of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and his contributions to automotive history are writ large for many enthusiasts and especially those how favor his namesake sports cars. Of course, any industrialist living in Germany in the period between the wars was going to be faced with moral dilemmas that would also play important parts in their legacy. Both Dr. Porsche – designer of the Volkswagen Type 1  – and his son, Ferry, who designed the first Porsche-branded cars had ties to the Nazi party. This was actually a pretty amazing achievement as Porsche was not German but Czechoslovakian, and in the Nazi mentality Czechs were a lessor people. The Nazi’s got Porsche to renounce his Czech citizenship and become a German because he obviously had value to the party. Today’s bit of trivia isn’t concerned with party affiliation or the negative aspects of the family’s existence during this time, but instead with the elements of interest shared by both father and son that would drive them to create one of the most successful and enduring small auto makers on the planet – the racing and building of cars. This was evident in the 1937 trip they took to America. From Stuttcars:

Ferry joins his father on his second US visit. They travel to USA on the SS “Bremen” (June 22-26). The first goal was a visit to the Vanderbilt Cup race at the Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island, New York on July 5. Bernd Rosemeyer and Ernst von Delius took part in this race in Auto Union 16-cyclinder “P” racing cars (Porsche Type 22). Bernd Rosemeyer finished in first place ahead of Dick Seaman in a Mercedes-Benz. Ernst von Delius was fourth. It was the first time since 1918 that German cars had raced in North America. Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche were also accompanied by Jakob Werlin of Daimler-Benz, Otto Dieckhoff, an expert in production techniques, Dr. Bodo Lafferentz of the German Workers Front and Ghislaine Kaes, Dr.Porsche’s private secretary. After the race, the group studied the modern production methods of major American motor manufacturers, in order to gain ideas for the proposed Volkswagen plant.

The Porsches, father and son met with a number of car maker executives, but most notably they had a meeting with Henry Ford, who at the time was a open supporter of the Socialist regime in Germany, an advocacy that was likely a symptom of his long failing mental health. One wonders if the two were able to glean anything of use from Ford during the meeting? Image source: Stuttcars