See, if you're serious about Porsches- and what Porsche zealot isn't?- you want a book about Ferdinand Porsche, the father of the brand, to pack some heft! You'll need a level of detail that's so overwhelmingly, in fact alarmingly, obsessive that you'll learn something new on every page.

This is such a book. Nearly 500 pages, a bonanza of Über-Geeky technical details (ever wonder how Ferdinand managed to make the connecting-rod arrangement work in a W9 aircraft engine in 1917?), and eleventy-million vintage photographs. On top of that, you get eight gorgeous, porn-grade foldout color pages with cutaway illustrations by artist Wolfgang Franke, featuring such machines as the 1922 Austro-Daimler ADS-R and the 1936 Auto Union C-Type. This thing- which weighs about as much as a manhole cover- is definitely one of the most beautiful car books I've ever seen, and it will make the other car books on your coffee table look like Go, Dog Go.

But hey, now that I've mentioned Porsche's role in designing the Auto Union race cars, we've got to address the most troubling aspect of Genesis Of Genius: its treatment of Ferdinand's activities once Hitler and the National Socialist Party came to power. Here's what we get on that subject: deafening silence. The narrative reaches the early 1930s and then… starts… treading… very… carefully… among… the… land mines. For example, the Auto Union racers were pure propaganda tools for the Third Reich, just like their athletes in the '36 Olympics- surely Porsche had some comments on the subject at the time? Not in this book. As Ludvigsen states in the preface: "This account of Ferdinand Porsche's career stops short of detailed description of the well-known achievements that some consider his greatest, the Auto Union racer and the Volkswagen. Thus we've characterized these years as the Genesis Of Genius." A cop-out? Sure! Perhaps acceptable in a straight-up wank job of a book aimed at the most devoted of single-interest car geeks, but we're dealing with a high-quality, obsessively researched and well-executed biography here and such omissions say something- is ominous too strong a word?- about the author's expectations of his readership.

So, because I'm an elitist biography snob who gets offended when the subject's warts get airbrushed out (I'm reading this book at the moment), I'm going to deduct a rod from the highest possible 5-rod rating (in honor of the Mercedes-Benz OM617) and give this book four rods. Murilee says check it out!

Images reprinted with permission from Ferdinand Porsche—Genesis of Genius by Karl Ludvigsen, © Bentley Publishers, all rights reserved.
[Bentley Publishers]

For serious road racing, you need a car with the engine in the middle: behind the driver but in front of the rear axle. While pretty in its physics on paper, the idea of mid-engined car construction was a difficult birth. In spite of its conception and very successful application by Ferdinand Porsche in the pre-war Benz Tropfenwagen (pictured left) and various Auto Unions, motor racing emerged from World War Two with front-engined cars.

But then physics came marching down on a racing establishment uncomfortable with the idea of horse-pushed carriages. 1958 would be the last season in Formula One won by a front-engined car, followed by Le Mans in 1962 and the Indianapolis 500 in 1964. Since these respective years, all of these races and championships have been won by mid-engined racing cars. Road cars soon followed, with the tiny fiberglass De Tomaso Vallelunga in 1964, then a year later the very car that gave birth to the word supercar: the Lamborghini Miura, with its transversely mid-mounted V12.

In Formula One and at the Indianapolis 500, it was pesky outsiders who convinced the ruling elite with their performances that mid-engined was the way to go. At Le Mans, a most unlikely development occured: reigning Ferrari replaced its front-engined 1962 330 TRI/LM Spyder (a derivative of a five-year-old design) with the radically new 250 P (pictured above at the Nürburgring) for 1963. The scuderia promptly won both at Sebring and at Le Mans.

It was all doom and gloom for the front engine as the Ferraris were followed by the Ford GT40 and decades of Porsches, beginning with the monstrous 917. But then in 1997, an American decided to give the mid-engine the finger. His name was Dr. Donald Panoz and he liked his six-liter V8’s up front, thank you very much.

The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 was a closed coupé with a Roush V8, named after the Panoz Esperante roadster with which it had little in common. In a sense, it was also mid-engined—but unlike every other mid-engined car, it had its engine between the front axle and the driver.

The GTR-1 had its share of teething problems in its debut year, but it returned for 1998 to take seventh place at Le Mans. One of the drivers was David Brabham, the son of triple Formula One world champion Jack "Black Jack” Brabham, who would go on to win last weekend’s race with Peugeot.

At the end of the 1998 racing season, the GT category that the GTR-1 raced in was eliminated. Panoz countered with a brand-new prototype for the next season: the open-top LMP-1. The car retained the GTR-1’s Batmobile proportions and its six-liter thunder-happy V8, presenting an even more Cyrano-esque nose.

The LMP-1 raced at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race made famous by the flying CLR’s of Mercedes-Benz. Driven by Brabham and company, the car finished seventh, similar to its closed-top sibling at the previous year’s race. The LMP-1 would produce its best result in 2000 with a fifth overall finish—which it would repeat in 2003 behind the all-conquering Audis and Audi-derived Bentleys.

By then, the LMP-1 was an aging design, and it was replaced with the LMP07, which would prove disappointing. Panoz withdrew from prototype racing and returned to Le Mans in the GT2 class for 2005, to compete against Ferraris, Porsches and Spykers derived from road cars. Their first outing at the scorching 2005 race would produce no results, but a front-engined Panoz Esperante GT-LM driven by three Brits would beat both Ferrari and Porsche to win GT2 in 2006.

While Panoz’s front-mid-engined prototypes could never really hold up against mid-engined racing cars from major manufacturers, they proved that the front-mid engine construction was a viable concept. In the years that followed, a crop of supercars built on the same principle would emerge: the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and the Ferrari 599 GTB. The latter is now also available as a track-only version, for decades inconceivable in a front-engined Ferrari, showing perhaps that we have indeed come full circle since Enzo Ferrari first commissioned a mid-engined prototype for Le Mans in 1963.

All we need now is a team with the funding and the guts to follow through.

Photo Credit: Matt Turner/ALLSPORT, Speedhunters, Lokis_world/Flickr, Mike Hewitt /Allsport, Ferrari, Ker Robertson /Allsport

With Ferdinand at the wheel, the four motor car was a race winner and reached speeds of 37 mph. He would go on to add an on-board generator to another car to provide unlimited range and also predate the Chevy Volt by about 100 years. [CNNMoney] [Porsche]

Herr Doktor Ferdinand Porsche was certainly a prolific fellow, this much is known. The gargantuanly-hairball Silver Arrows, the Beetle, and various German military vehicles of the Roughly-987-Less-Than-a-Thousand-Year-Reich. He also sired Ferry Porsche, who gave the world the vaunted Neun Elf, and great-uncled Ferdinand Pi ch, who spearheaded both the Can-Am-killing 917 program and the sales-underperforming Volkswagen Phaeton.

If Bruce were a substance that could replace blood plasma, sure as shootin' that's what Dr. Porsche had coursing through his arteries. But who knew dude designed anything as pedestrian as air-cooled diesel tractors? Or furthermore, that anyone ever designed a tractor as awesomely named as the Volkschlepper? Jeez. He makes Dr. Z look like he earned his doctorate via a serindipitous Cracker Jack purchase. – Davey G. Johnson

History of Porsche-Diesel [Porsche-Diesel North American Tractor Registry]

Related:
One of the Rarest: Porsche 916 on eBay [Internal]