A racing car based on the Type 60 Volkswagen was developed alongside the main project on behalf of the Volkswagen Plant, intended to promote the "Kraft durch Freude Car" in a long-distance race from Berlin to Rome. So under the internal code name Type 64 or, respectively, Type 60K10, the engineering team developed and built three racing coups in spring 1939 for the "Non-Stop Speed Trial", as it was called, planned for September of the same year. Since a long stretch of this 1,500-kilometre race was to be on the new German autobahn, Porsche and his engineers gave particular attention to the car's streamlining. With its aerodynamic aluminium body, fully covered wheel arches and a modified flat-four VW engine initially developing 33 bhp, the Berlin-Rome Car reached a top speed of 145 km/h or 90 mph. When the war prevented the race from actually taking place, Porsche and his engineers used the Type 64 already completed for the road as a fast grand touring sports car averaging a speed of 130 km/h or 80 mph on their journeys from Stuttgart to Berlin. Today Type 64 with its beautiful styling is acknowledged as the ancestor of all Porsche sports cars built since 1948.
Each of these projects raised Ferry Porsche up a bit further, out of the shadow of his father Ferdinand. And although he was full of admiration of his father's skills, "we Porsches by no means always agreed on technical matters", he stated later. "When I expressed a different opinion from him in the presence of others, he was really angry. I think he was afraid of losing his face. But whenever we had such a disagreement while we were alone, just the two of us, maybe on a long trip in the car, he was far more open to my opinion and listened patiently to what I had to say. Dad was a very authoritarian man."
1944: Porsche in Gmnd
After the outbreak of World War II the Porsche engineers spent most of their time developing military vehicles. Apart from the Type 81 VW "Kastenwagen", a kind of rudimentary jeep, the Company established as Porsche KG in late 1937 also developed the Type 62 "KdF-Gelnde-Fahrzeug", an off-road vehicle for military use, the Type 82 "VW Kbelwagen", again a jeep primarily for military purposes, as well as the Type 87 all-wheel-drive model and the Type 166 "VW-Schwimmwagen", a dual-purpose amphibian vehicle. In late 1939 the Porsche Engineering Office was given the order by the German Armament Bureau to develop a medium-weight fighting tank, the construction of which was nevertheless stopped ahead of time since there was a greater need for heavy tanks.
As of 1943, life became increasingly difficult for the employees at Porsche on account of air raids in Stuttgart. Urged by the Supreme Armament Command of the German Wehrmacht, Porsche KG ultimately had to move its engineering office from Stuttgart to the town of Gmnd in the Austrian province of Carinthia in autumn 1944. Makeshift workshops were constructed on the premises of W. Meineke Holzgroindustrie Berlin-Gmnd, while the materials depot was housed on the premises of a flying school in nearby Zell am See. Split up into a large number of workshops and offices, the new Porsche Plant was soon ironically nicknamed "Vereinigte Httenwerke" or "Associated Steel Works" by the employees.
After the war the plant facilities of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG in Zuffenhausen were first used by the French military. In August 1945 an American unit took over the plant now serving as a repair workshop for trucks. In the meantime the Porsche Plant in Gmnd had received a provisional licence to start work again, the Porsche workforce of some 140 employees being allowed to "design and construct motorised tractors, gas generators and other civilian equipment" and to repair "motor vehicles and agricultural machinery".
In this difficult situation Ferdinand Porsche accepted the invitation by a French commission to go to Baden-Baden in mid-November 1945 in order to discuss the possible continuation of the Volkswagen Project in France. But before the contract was signed at another meeting a month later, he was arrested together with his son Ferry and his son-in-law Anton Pich by the French Secret Service in Baden-Baden. And while Ferry Porsche was released from prison in March 1946, Ferdinand Porsche had to remain in custody despite a severe illness and was subsequently taken to Paris and Dijon.