Porsche Used to Build Tractors
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There’s something about tractors and performance car manufacturers that have some strange confluence. Lamborghini is the most famous, as they began as farm equipment manufacturer. Porsche certainly didn’t start that way, but they did start on it very early.
In 1930, Ferdinand Porsche was hard at work building a little car called the Volkswagen. That rear-engined people mover would eventually go on to become the “kubelwagon” and what we would eventually understand as “the Beetle”. But before all that, he also began working on the Volk-tractor.
The fact that it was a diesel isn’t that suprising considering it IS a tractor, but it also marks the official point of Porsche’s involvement with this type of engine. They build them from 1930 up into 1963, when the last Porsche-Diesel tractor rolled off the line. In fact, the only other Porsche to be powered by a diesel engine is the Cayenne. Yep. Now when someone calls the Cayenne a tractor, you can just respond that it “has heritage”.
via [PorscheBahn]