Whereas Porsche as a sports activities automobile firm dates again to the registration of the first Porsche 356 in 1948, the corporate’s roots return farther, to the Porsche engineering firm based by Ferdinand Porsche in 1931.

Nonetheless, Porsche was already in his fifties when he based his eponymous firm, and thus he had already designed a number of vehicles whereas working at different firms. A kind of was when Porsche was working because the managing director of an Austrian automobile firm often called Austro Daimler.

It was there the place, on the age of 45, he began work on the Austro Daimler ADS-R race automobile, a Targa Florio class champion nicknamed Sascha and right now the oldest drivable automobile on the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. It not too long ago returned to Wiener Neustadt in Austria, the place Austro Daimler was positioned. The corporate was ultimately merged in 1934 with Steyr Daimler Puch, which right now operates as Magna Steyr.

Whereas working at Austro Daimler, Porsche needed to construct a small, light-weight, and inexpensive automobile with 4 seats, which is also simply produced in excessive volumes, a aim that he additionally envisioned for the Volkswagen Beetle that might come later. Nonetheless, to construct sufficient curiosity to get the inexperienced gentle for manufacturing from Austro Daimler’s board, he additionally designed a race automobile primarily based on the street automobile’s working gear. The ensuing ADS-R shared the water-cooled 1.1-liter inline-4 of the street automobile, however skipped the total physique and solely featured a single seat for the motive force. The engine was rated at near 50 hp and had simply 1,318 kilos to hold.

The Sascha nickname got here from Alexander Joseph Graf Kolowrat-Krakowsky, who funded the mission and whose personal nickname was Sascha. 4 prototypes had been constructed, and all 4 celebrated their premiere on the 1922 Targa Florio. To make them straightforward to determine from afar, Kolowrat-Krakowsky got here up with the thought to color enjoying card symbols on the our bodies.

The ADS-R managed a one-two end on the race. However regardless of that and plenty of extra racing successes, the manufacturing inexperienced gentle was by no means given, due largely to the extreme inflation Austria and neighboring Germany had been experiencing on the time.

To mark the one hundredth anniversary of the ADS-R, Porsche and its official journal, “Christophorus,” had employees on the Porsche Museum put together the automobile for a return to Wiener Neustadt. Whereas the Austro Daimler manufacturing facility is not there, streets with names similar to Ferdinand-Porsche-Ring remind guests of the city’s heritage.

HIGH-RES GALLERY: 1922 Austro Daimler ADS-R race automobile “Sascha”

This text was initially printed by Motor Authority, an editorial companion of ClassicCars.com