Contemporary Witnesses

Tilmann Brodbeck

As an employee of Burst, Tilman Brodbeck was one of the inventors of the rear spoiler on the 911 Carrera RS 2.7. After school, Brodbeck studied mechanical and aeronautical engineering at Darmstadt Technical University, specialising in aerodynamics, before he applied for a job at Porsche.

Initially, he worked on the development of the EA 266, the forerunner of the first VW Golf, and on the 914. To improve the handling of the 911 Carrera RS 2.7, especially when cornering, Brodbeck worked with Burst and other employees in mid-1972 to develop the rear spoiler – a completely new feature for production cars at the time. In combination with the front spoiler – which had been invented shortly before – it made the Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 both faster and safer.

After the 911 Carrera RS 2.7 project, Brodbeck took care of the development of the 924 and became head of body testing for third-party development projects. After 10 years in development at Weissach, he transferred to Zuffenhausen, becoming an assistant to the board members Ernst Fuhrmann, Peter W. Schutz, Heinz Branitzki, Arno Bohn and Wendelin Wiedeking. In his last post at Porsche, he headed the Porsche Exclusive department (Porsche factory customisations) from 1995 until his retirement in 2009.

Hermann Burst

Hermann Burst began his career in 1967 as a graduate engineer for the Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines (FKFS) at the University of Stuttgart. In the wind tunnel for experimental aerodynamics, he investigated, among other things, the airflow of Porsche vehicles and in 1968 met the company’s racing boss Peter Falk.

Falk was looking for a capable aerodynamics engineer to make Porsche’s racing cars even faster. In January 1969, at the age of 28, Burst started working in the motorsport department, and set about improving the aerodynamics of the 917, 917 Can Am, 908-03 and 908-02 long-tail models. Around two years later he moved to the development department. There, as a senior member of the team, he worked on bodywork testing and development for series production cars. Computer simulations had yet to exist, but fifth-scale and quarter-scale models were used in the wind tunnel. There, the engineers looked at air resistance, lift, wind noise and the way a vehicle kicks up dirt that then sticks to it. Initially, Burst had the support of seven employees, but over the years the bodywork testing department grew to as many as 70 people.

In 1972, the Head of Development at Porsche, Helmuth Bott, asked Burst to look into the lift of the Porsche 911, which was too high and causing the car to behave skittishly at high speeds. Together with their colleague Tilman Brodbeck and the stylist Rolf Wiener, they invented the rear spoiler, better known as the ‘ducktail’, on the RS.

Burst’s professional accomplishments include the development of the 911 Carrera RS 2.7, variants of the 917, the agile 908-03 and the 959. He also developed fully galvanised bodywork for Porsche models, and experimented with aluminium bodywork and the integration of airbags. For the 964, Burst and his team developed a fully clad underbody for the first time, and a rear spoiler that extended automatically at speeds above 80 km/h. Until 1992, Burst worked as the Head of Bodywork Development at Porsche in Weissach.

Harm Lagaaij

Automotive designer Harm Lagaaij started out at Porsche in September 1971. Shortly after joining, he was given the task of designing the lettering for a particularly sporty new car. “We wanted to assign the already famous ‘Carrera’ name to a production model, and thought about how we could best represent that,” he recalls. Until then, Porsche had only occasionally used lettering on racing cars, with the name ‘Porsche’ positioned down the side between the front and rear wheel arches.

Until 1972, Lagaaij worked on the 911 Carrera RS 2.7, followed by vehicles such as the the 911 G-Model and the Porsche 924. Along the way, the designer oversaw the graphics for racing cars such as the 911 Carrera RSR and the Martini Racing-liveried 936. In 1977, Lagaaij moved over to Ford as a designer, then to BMW Technik GmbH as Chief Designer. In 1989 he returned to Porsche, replacing his former boss, Anatole Lapine, as Chief Designer. In the years that followed, he developed the 968, 928 GTS, Boxster, Cayman, Carrera GT, Cayenne and the 993, 996 and 997 generations of the 911, among others. Lagaaij remained as head of the Porsche design department at Weissach until 2004.

August Achleitner

August Achleitner studied mechanical and industrial engineering in Munich. In 1983, he joined Porsche, initially working on chassis development. In 1989, he became the company’s head of the ‘technical product planning, vehicle concepts and package’ department, which included special projects. This gave him a deep insight into all future models and potential concepts at a very early stage. Achleitner shaped sports cars at Porsche like nobody else.

In 2001, he was appointed head of the 911 model range and became ‘Mr 911’. In the following decades, Achleitner and his team continued to develop the 911. In addition to the basic models, this also included work on the especially dynamic RS models. Until 2019, Achleitner was responsible for the 911 and the 718, reporting directly to the CEO. He retired on 1 April 2019.