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“I was lucky to work a lot with
Herbert Linge… At first I was his
passenger until one day he said to me,
‘Okay, you drive,’ and then he acted as
my monitor. I learned a lot from him”
for owners when you bought a car. Porsche was
trying to improve this.”
The following year, Bott sent him to work in
Daimler Benz’s engine department on a 12-month
secondment: “It was a huge operation with vast
R&D resources and full of professors. It was my
first experience of really brilliant engineers. You
don’t find those sorts of people today. It really
was a golden time.” At Mercedes-Benz he met
Peter Falk, who a couple of years later would
jump ship to Zuffenhausen. Steckkönig recalls
12-hour days at Sindelfingen – the strength of the
Wirtschaftswunder economy was causing labour
shortages. Carrying his technician’s diploma from
Mercedes, he returned to Porsche and completed
his studies with an exacting practical test, which
involved building an alloy cylinder head; at this
time he was lucky not to lose his sight when
a drip from an overhead water pipe fell onto
molten metal, and the resultant explosion shot a
fragment into his eye.
Steckkönig remembers Werk 1 as like being
in a family: Ferry would appear and greet the
Reparaturwerkstatt men every day and they
would take turns to look after his cars. Bott
meanwhile had recruited his trusty VW van driver
to the 911 development team and Steckkönig
recalls long drives to Ehra-Lessien, the VW proving
ground, as well as many miles on Swabian roads
and the Nürburgring. “The trouble with the ’Ring
even then was that on public days it was too
crowded, but then the tyre companies started