During World War II, a young Ferdinand Piëch – the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche – sat on a train and considered his future. His father, Anton, was in charge of the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg during the wartime effort. Ferdinand, however, did not want to be in the office like his dad, “but for real, down there, where the workers repaired the airplanes and rode the trains, for real, with my hand,” he later recalled. Following the war, Piëch did just that: he oversaw the racing program at the fledgling company that his uncle, Ferry Porsche, had created, earning a reputation for pushing the technical boundaries. The 911R and 917 was created under Piëch’s watchful eye and unrelenting push for supremacy.
Piëch and family members argued so frequently that in…
