BIRTHPLACE OF THE FIRST CAR NAMED PORSCHE
Europe’s first private Porsche Museum is situated in Gmünd, the birthplace of the first car named Porsche (1944-1950). The extensive collection contains 40 exhibits: from Porsche 356 style 356 020 ALU, engineered and constructed in Gmünd, from Porsche rally and race cars to special exhibitions changing annually. Helmut Pfeifhofer (born 1938) founded the Porsche museum in his hometown in 1982.
As the Porsche construction office had to move away from Stuttgart’s bombing raids, in 1944 a new location was set up near Gmünd in Carinthia (Gmünd in Kärnten), Austria. It was 320 miles/515 km from Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. The Porsche construction office started to work in wooden sheds of a former sawmill. During the difficult period, many projects not related to cars (tractors, cable pull for mountain skiers, mining winch etc.) were also carried out. In addition to different machinery, Gmünd is the birthplace of the Porsche type 360 Cisitalia Formula 1 car drawings.
