50 free Porsche trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Porsche trivia begins long before the first sports car. This quiz opens with Ferdinand Porsche: a Bohemian-born engineer who built an electric car with motors in its wheel hubs in 1898, the world's first petrol-electric hybrid in 1901, the Mercedes SSK, the Auto Union racers and the Volkswagen Beetle, before wartime tank work and postwar imprisonment. Then his son Ferry, the sawmill at Gmünd, the 356 and its Beetle parts, Erwin Komenda's bodywork and the Württemberg coat of arms that became the crest. The heart of the quiz is the 911: why it was almost called the 901, who styled it, the flat-six, the Targa named after a Sicilian road race, the switch to water cooling, the millionth car and its place in the Car of the Century poll. Racing questions cover the 917's first Le Mans win, Piëch's 25 cars in the yard, the flat-12, Steve McQueen, the record 19 wins, and the 959 that won Dakar and became the fastest road car of its day. The last section covers the front-engined 924 and 928, the Cayenne, Leipzig, the Taycan's Turkish name and fake 'Turbo', the Carrera GT, Wiedeking, the 2009 deal that put Porsche inside Volkswagen, Rimac and the 2022 IPO. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Porsche, Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche and the individual models, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit any car fan; the expert tier reaches the Elefant tank destroyer, Valmet in Finland and the Austro-Daimler Sascha.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which German city is Porsche headquartered?
Stuttgart
The company's factory and museum are in the city's Zuffenhausen district.
Q 02In which year did Ferdinand Porsche found the company, with Adolf Rosenberger and his son-in-law Anton?
1931
The first offices were at Kronenstraße 24 in the city centre; one of the first jobs was designing a people's car for the German government.
Q 03Which mass-market car did Ferdinand Porsche's firm design for the German government in the 1930s?
The Volkswagen Beetle
Its military offshoots, the Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen, were built in their tens of thousands during the war.
Q 04Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Maffersdorf, a town in Bohemia that is now part of which country?
Czech Republic
It was part of Austria-Hungary at the time; he only became a naturalised German in 1934.
Q 05What pioneering vehicle did Ferdinand Porsche create at Jakob Lohner & Company in 1901?
The first petrol-electric hybrid car
The Lohner-Porsche Mixte used a Daimler engine to drive a generator feeding electric wheel-hub motors, a series-hybrid layout.
Q 06Where were the wheel-hub motors mounted on Porsche's electric Egger-Lohner car of 1898?
In the front wheels
Adding two more motors at the back made it four-wheel drive; an Englishman ordered one in 1900.
Q 07Which 1930s Grand Prix racers did Ferdinand Porsche design, alongside the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK?
The Auto Union Silver Arrows
He was named Car Engineer of the Century in 1999.
Q 08Porsche's rejected wartime chassis design for the Tiger I was reused as the base for which vehicle?
The Elefant tank destroyer
Henschel & Son won both Tiger contracts; Porsche also built two prototypes of the enormous Maus.
Q 09Where were the first Porsche 356s built, in a small sawmill, while Ferdinand Porsche was jailed?
Gmünd, Austria
Ferry Porsche started the car because he could not find an existing one he wanted to buy; about 50 aluminium-bodied cars were made there.
Q 10Which honour did the 356 win at its first outing, a race at Innsbruck in 1948?
Its class
It had been road-certified in Austria on 8 June 1948.
Q 11Roughly how many Porsche 356s were built between 1948 and 1965?
76,000
About half of them survive; production continued until April 1965, months after the 911 debuted.
Q 12Which designer shaped the body of the 356, having also designed the Beetle's body?
Erwin Komenda
He led Porsche's body department until the 911's design caused friction with the family.
Q 13The Porsche crest is based on the arms of which former German state, dissolved in 1952?
Württemberg
The city arms with its rearing horse sit in the middle as an inescutcheon.
Q 21The 911 Targa takes its name from a road race held where?
Sicily
'Targa' means 'plate' in Italian; Porsche's last Targa Florio win, in 1973, came with a 911 Carrera RS.
Q 22Where did the 911 rank in the 1999 Car of the Century poll?
Fifth
It and the original Beetle were the only two in the top five still in continuous production.
Q 23In which year did Porsche build the one millionth 911?
2017
The car is kept in the company's permanent collection.
Q 24Which car gave Porsche its first overall win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in 1970?
Q 14Ferdinand Porsche died on 30 January 1951 from complications following what?
A stroke
He had spent 20 months in French custody after the war.
Q 15Ferry Porsche got his nickname because his parents disliked which more usual short form of his name?
Ferdy
It reminded them too much of a typical coachman's nickname, a profession the family's work was making obsolete.
Q 16The 911 was originally to be sold under which number, before Peugeot objected?
901
Peugeot claimed exclusive French rights to three-digit names with a zero in the middle; 82 cars carried the original badge.
Q 17At which motor show was the 911 first presented, in 1963?
Frankfurt
The show car had a non-working mock-up engine; production began in September 1964.
Q 18Who penned the styling of the original 911?
Ferdinand 'Butzi' Porsche
He later left the company and founded Porsche Design, known for sunglasses, watches and furniture.
Q 19What engine configuration has every 911 used since 1964?
Rear-mounted flat-six
The 356-derived four-cylinder version in the same body was sold as the 912.
Q 20With which generation, in 1998, did the 911 switch from air-cooled to water-cooled engines?
996
Torsion-bar suspension gave way to MacPherson struts and multi-link rear suspension over the same decades.
917
Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood drove the winning Porsche Salzburg 917K; the car repeated the win in 1971.
Q 25How many 917s did Porsche line up in April 1969 to satisfy the homologation inspectors?
25
He even offered to let the inspectors drive any of them; they declined.
Q 26What was the engine layout of the Porsche 917?
Flat-12
It grew from 4.5 to 5.0 litres; the turbocharged 917/30 Can-Am car made about 1,100 bhp in 1973.
Q 27What does the K stand for in the name of the Porsche 917K?
Kurzheck (short-tail)
The long-tail Langheck was designed for minimum drag; Gulf-liveried 917Ks star in Steve McQueen's film about the French endurance classic.
Q 28How many outright 24 Hours of Le Mans wins had Porsche taken by the end of 2025?
19
A record for any manufacturer; the 911-derived 935 turbo added one of them in 1979.
Q 29Which was the first production road-going Porsche with a water-cooled, front-mounted engine?
924
Built in Neckarsulm from 1976, it began as a joint venture with Volkswagen and was the first Porsche with a fully automatic gearbox.
Q 30Which Porsche, the firm's first production V8, won European Car of the Year in 1978?
928
It was one of the few times the award did not go to a mass-produced family car; it was meant to replace the 911 but the 911 outlived it.