Erwin Komenda

Erwin Komenda was born on the 6th of April 1904 in Weyer, a little village in upper-Austria near the city Steyr.From 1926 to 1929 he worked as a car-body-designer in the steyrer factories. There he met Ferdinand Porsche in 1929 when Porsche joined as technical director of the steyrer factory. As a result of Komenda's future-prospective ideas he became chief-engineer of mercedes-daimler-benz in sindelfingen (Germany) from 1929 to 1931. Under his era mercedes cars presented with a typical reduction in weight. Mercedes had also developed a streamline-car in monocoque construction. Komenda canceled his most respectalbe job with mercedes in october 1931 and joined Ferdinand Porsche’s new company, a step into an unknown future.

From 1931 to his death in 1966 Erwin Komenda was chief-engineer and leader of the Porsche car-body-construction department.

Komenda developed the car body construction of the the vw-beetle, the most built car body of the last century. He designed with his co-worker Josef Mickl the famous auto-union-grandprix-car and the cisitalia-grandprix-car.

After second world war Komenda designed in Gmünd in Austria the first Porsche sport car, the Porsche type 356, the 356 Porsche speedster and the follow-up-356-cars. Komenda also work out the design of the Porsche 550-Spyder. Due to his early death in 1966 his last work for the Porsche company was the development of the porsche typ 911.