Carrera 4 Porsche Allrad 1900-1990

Edited by Reinhard Seiffert, ‘Carrera 4 Porsche Allrad 1900-1990’ and with contributions from Ferry Porsche, Helmuth Bott, Manfred Bantle, Frederick Bezner, Heinz Dorsch, Lothar Witte and Henry Keller, the book looks to trace the history of Porsche’s connection with four wheel drive. At the beginning of the story is the Lohner-Porsche with its electric hub motors on all four wheels in 1900. Since then the name of Porsche and the development of four-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles has been united. As a slight side line from the Porsche focus, the book also takes a look at the 1903 Spyker from Holland which was the first petrol driven automobile with mechanical all wheel drive. 1934 brought along a design by Porsche’s Chief Engineer Karl Rabe for the Volkswagen T32 4R. It came as no surprise that in 1939 the Daimler Benz T80 World Record breaking car driven by two of its three axles appeared, following on the tradition of the 1900 Lohner Porsche which has also been used in record attempts. The post war period with the Porsche Type 350 Cisitalia race car with water cooled 12 cylinder engine, continued the fascination in 4x4, although it was some time later when the first successful production car with permanent all wheel drive appeared in the Audi Quattro. Porsche were to follow on with its very own 959 model which was used in a host of sporting events, and then again in Project 964 which was to be developed into the Carrera 4 and is well covered within these pages. For those readers with a Technical interest, aspects are well catered for, with an exploded view of the 4 x 4 system and handling of all wheel drive vehicles.