Ferdinand ''Butzi'' Porsche was the industrial designer responsible for the shape of the Porsche 911 sports car. He was the last member of the German engineering dynasty who could claim to have put pen to paper on a car design bearing the Porsche badge.
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche was born in Stuttgart, Germany, the eldest son of Ferry and Dorothea Porsche.
Innovator … Ferdinand Porsche with the prototype for the 911.
He was named after his grandfather Ferdinand Porsche, the brilliant Austrian-born engineer who created the Volkswagen at Hitler's behest.
He showed an early acumen for design by making his own toys and was the only one of his brothers to join the family business.
In the late 1940s, Butzi started work in his grandfather's workshops. At the time, momentum was gathering behind the notion of a rear-engined sports car based around VW components that would carry the Porsche badge and change a design consultancy (creating cars for other firms) into a marque in its own right.
By the time Butzi was at secondary school in Switzerland in 1953, the Porsche 356 was already a commercial hit, far exceeding his father's modest expectations. Butzi completed an internship with the ignition specialist Robert Bosch before starting work in the Porsche technical design office in Stuttgart after flunking his studies at the Ulm School of Design.
By 1958, plans were already afoot for an upmarket six-cylinder successor to the decade-old 356 range. Butzi was given the task of creating a body style for this new ''Type 7'' car that would be roomier and sleeker than the already rather quaintly rotund 356. This Porsche car for the 1960s had to maintain the ideals of elegant functionalism that had made the 356 a cult object among devoted fans.
It was a formidable task for a man still in his 20s but the new Porsche 911, launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1963, eclipsed its predecessor to become the car that would define everything the Porsche brand stands for. It was recently relaunched in its seventh generation but was recognisably the same model.
Butzi was made head of the Porsche design studio in 1962 and then was responsible for the 904 Carrera GTS, essentially a racing model, which he often stated was a favourite among his creations because he was able to design it with very little outside interference.
In 1968, he was made deputy managing director, but the family feeling within Porsche in the 1960s could be corrosive. Butzi feuded with his cousin Ferdinand Piech and their bitter power struggles prompted Ferry Porsche to float the company and remove both men from the picture in 1972.
Piech went on to enjoy huge success as head of Audi. Butzi returned as Porsche chairman between 1990 and 1993 and is credited with helping save the company by appointing Wendelin Wiedeking as chairman.
Ferdinand Porsche is survived by his wife, Brigitte, whom he married in 1960, and three sons.
Martin Buckley, Guardian News & Media