When Porsche started making cars, Ferry himself had to carry out much of the development mileage of the Pre-A. As the company grew this became the task of Herbert Linge and Rolf Wütherich, who worked under development director Helmut Rombold. With the advent of the 911, Peter Falk joined Helmuth Bott, who was already head of testing, and the test development team became larger.
By now Günther Steckkönig, Porsche’s homegrown race engineer and talented endurance racer, had been promoted to join them. Later, as the emphasis shifted towards competition cars Helmuth became engineering director and Ferdinand Piëch’s deputy, and Peter Falk moved to be team manager in the competition department. In the 1970s Porsche started using Algeria for high-speed proving tests and people were seconded from all departments for these missions – not just mechanics and engineers, but characters such as head of styling Tony Lapine (also an amateur racer) as well as, on occasion, Helmuth. Once his responsibilities with the 917 campaign were over, Peter organised these tests.
As the company became more structured and the model lines broadened with the transaxle cars, a dedicated development team
