where they raced the cars they designed. Ferry remarked later, "...cars were my greatest passion from the very beginning.". For example, on Christmas Eve of 1920, Ferry Porsche was originally misled by his parents, who first presented him with a miniature coach pulled by a goat, while his real present was a petrol-driven miniature car with a four-stroke, two-cylinder engine specially designed by his father. Ferry Porsche learned to drive when he was only 10 years old. At age 12 he drove a real race car, the Austro-Daimler Sascha, which had just won its class at Targa Florio, Sicily, in 1922. Ferry Porsche attended school at Wiener Neustadt and Stuttgart, concentrating on mathematics. Move to Stuttgart In 1923, the family moved to Stuttgart, due to senior Ferdinand Porsche's unrest about the squandering financial destiny of Austro-Daimler. He joined the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft at Stuttgart-Untertürkheim (where the design department from the whole company was concentrated). Soon, he achieved the position of technical director. Meanwhile, Ferry Porsche received consent from the company to stay at the plant together with his father because of his increasing interest in design issues. The local town authorities endorsed a special permission for him to drive, even at 16 years of age. Ferdinand Porsche senior enjoyed success particularly with his racing cars which excelled at the race tracks. His personal preference for designing compact cars differed with the current policies of (now merged) Daimler-Benz, who were in favor of more luxurious Mercedes-Benz models. So, in 1929, Daimler-Benz began to question Porsche's work seriously and halted it suddenly. He worked temporarily as the technical director of Steyr AG in Austria; nonetheless, he soon decided to open a consulting office of automobile design, again at Stuttgart. At the same time, after finishing school, Ferry Porsche was residing at Stuttgart where he began working for Bosch Company in 1928; this was to add depth to his interest in automobile engineering. In 1930, he was taking additional lessons in physics and engineering, however he never formally enrolled in any university. Construction Bureau at Stuttgart During the 1930s, Stuttgart had already established itself as a center for the automobile industry. Germany's most important car companies had settled in the region by then. It was thus an ideal location for the new Porsche design company. When Porsche senior opened his offices in April 1931, his son Ferry (then age 21) was by his