Max Hoffman & Porsche

In 1950 the idea of selling Porsches in America seemed improbable at best. With only 44 horsepower and seating for two, this tiny, turtle-shaped car was as expensive as a Cadillac convertible. What value would its agility and economy have in the land of straight roads and cheap fuel? Nevertheless Max Hoffman, who introduced so many great cars to America, thought the Porsche deserved a chance.

The links between Hoffman and Porsche were such that it would have been extremely unlikely for anyone else to have had a better chance of bringing the car to the United States. First, he was Austrian, having been born near Vienna on November 12th, 1904. As a young motorcycle racer and then as an automobile importer Hoffman had been well-known in Viennese motor circles.

Second, he had had close personal contact with the Porsches. He had summered at the Wörthersee and some of his legal affairs had been handled by Anton Piech, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche’s son in law. Third, he was financially secure and alert to interesting new attractions for the showroom he opened on New York’s Park Avenue in 1947. He had learned about the first Austrian Porsche from Swiss journalist Max Troesch, who sent him photos and a description.

Hoffman took delivery of three 1.1-liter Porsches in the early autumn of 1950. Two of them were bought by enthusiast Briggs Cunningham, who gave one to the wife of racing driver Sam Collier. Hoffman himself took a car to Watkins Glen, New York in September and entered it in the pre-race concours, where it won a trophy for “The Most Interesting Car”.

When Hoffman came to Paris for the Motor Car Salon in October 1950 he was able to help the Porsche delegation get comfortable rooms at the Hotel George V. He offered other courtesies as well, being especially helpful and respectful toward Dr. Porsche, whom he revered. Meeting with Porsche manager Albert Prinzing, however, he registered some complaints.

The carburetion on the cars he had received was anything but perfect, he said, which perhaps had something to do with the different gasoline in America. Moreover, American buyers expected more power than the little 1.1-liter engine could generate. With the 1.3-liter engine in the offing Porsche had at least something to offer Hoffman.

Max Hoffman was also not enthusiastic about the car’s styling: “I told Ferry Porsche, ‘That design is absolutely impossible. You will never sell that car in America.’” On a trip to the United States he and the younger Porsche visited commercial artist and car enthusiast Coby Whitmore, who sketched some designs with classic flowing fenders, reflecting America’s early infatuation with cars like the MG TC and the Mark IV.

Although such Porsches were never built, the conversation with Whitmore later contributed to the creation of the short-lived 356 America Roadster model. In the spring of 1951 Hoffman also advised Porsche that “the continued acceptance of cars shall be contingent upon the installation of a sufficiently strong bumper, as the cars can not be driven under existing traffic conditions.” So much for the appeal of Manhattan traffic.

In spite of his reservations about some aspects of the 356, Max Hoffman had great confidence in the potential of Porsche in the United States. In 1950 Ferry Porsche said he hoped Hoffman could find buyers for five cars a year in America. “If I can’t sell five a week,” rejoined Hoffman, “I’m not interested.” He imported 32 cars in 1951 and by 1954—selling what his ads called “the German automotive jewel”—he was marketing 11 Porsches a week in the United States. That figure already accounted for 30 percent of Porsche’s total production.

Every inch the businessman, Hoffman considered it a sign of naiveté in the motor trade that Porsche sent some spare parts with its cars at no extra charge. The Porsche people would later smile with indulgence (for there was little else they could do) when Hoffman imposed extra charges for items that came from Germany built into every car—items which Porsche considered to be standard equipment. This was Hoffman’s not-unsuccessful strategy for establishing more attractive base prices for his costly Porsches. By such means did the Austrian emigré lay the foundation for the fantastic success that Porsche was to enjoy in America.

Meanwhile the hyperactive Swabians kept improving the cars that they were producing. One of the first 1.5-liters to arrive in the late autumn of 1951 was a Cabriolet bought by burly Connecticut racing driver Bill Spear and tested for Auto magazine by Briton John Bentley. Bentley called its engine “a work of art,” marveled at “the amazing amount of front-seat room,” and warned that “a marked degree of over-steer is apparent.”

Bentley also observed that “mastery of the gearbox offers a stimulating challenge rewarded by a sense of achievement,” even though the absence of synchromesh was “annoying” for the driver in a real hurry. Bentley cited the car’s “hand-built” construction as the basis for a forecast: “Porsche production is rising towards 100 cars a month but is unlikely ever to exceed this figure, no matter how great the backlog of orders.” His forecast, like so many that questioned the ability of Porsche to expand, was well short of the mark.

In a later test of the 1952 356/1500 in Auto, its editor Dick van Osten stressed that certain driving techniques “can spin you around so fast you’ll be looking for the gold ring.” He added: “The basic key to success in handling a Porsche is to use about half the effort you usually use in driving.” Van Osten felt that the level of quality was such that the Porsche was “one of the rare sports cars that makes the owner feel that he has cheated the factory by paying so low a price”—$4,284 ($52,600 in 2026 dollars) for the coupe and $4,560 ($56,000 in today’s money) for the Cabriolet on the West Coast. Here was a rare suggestion that the little cars offered value for money.

Writer Barney Clark aptly summed up the paradoxical Porsche personality in Auto Sport Review: “You’ll probably step out of the Porsche with mixed feelings. Here is a really satisfactory little car, wonderfully comfortable for two people, with a softness of ride (particularly on really rough surfaces) that is almost miraculous, potent acceleration that puts it at the top of the 1500 cc class, and a better-than-100 mph top speed. But the price!—some $300 more than the Jaguar XK-120!

“Here is a luxury car,” Clark continued, “with a jewel-like body by Karosserie Reutter, beautifully fitted cloth and leather trim, carefully engineered forced-air heating system, Telefunken radio, reclining seat for the passenger—but here also is a ragged-sounding little four-cylinder power plant thumping away, a set of four far-from-quiet gears and a clutch that is not always free from what the British call judder.

“When you start the engine,” Clark wrote, “for one horrible moment you have the feeling you are trapped in a drastically-shrunken Greyhound bus—the rear engine is SO four-cylindered and SO air-cooled sounding, with a thin, emphatic beat.” Strange though it sounded to ears not yet conditioned by the beat of the Beetle, the 1.5-liter Type 527 engine was praised by testers for its unburstable feel and excellent performance. The frosting on the cake for most testers was the Porsche’s ability to deliver fuel economy of 27 to 35 miles per gallon as the rule rather than as the exception.

These first series-built 1.5-liter Porsches soon began to make their mark in competition in the United States where sports-car racing was enjoying

a renaissance. In the Mt. Equinox, Vermont hill-climb on October 28th, 1951 Max Hoffman was so fast, winning his class in a white Cabriolet, that he had to make a matching second run before Briggs Cunningham would believe he had actually gone up so quickly. As a sequel, Cunningham drove a white Cabriolet to a class victory at Palm Beach Shores, Florida on the following December 8th.

During the winter of 1951-1952 Hoffman imported three 356 Gmünd coupes, works-prepared in Le Mans trim, with full fender skirts and tuned 1,488 cc engines. One ran in the Palm Beach Shores event, driven by its owner Jack Rutherford. He placed 11th overall in the Riviera Trophy Race and third in the 1,500-cc class. Ed Trego had one and the third member of the imported trio went to John von Neumann.

Von Neumann was to Porsche in California what Hoffman was to Porsche on the East Coast. Son and heir of a famous Viennese nose and throat speciaist whose royal patients included Britain’s King Edward VIII, von Neumann spent much of his inheritance on speedy cars. In 1947 he went to work as a salesman of imports and in late 1948 opened his own small shop in North Hollywood.

“I was already familiar with Hoffman’s showmanship since he had sold cars in my home town of Vienna, Austria,” von Neumann recalled. On a New York trip early in 1951, he continued, “I stopped in to say hello and Max had a Porsche on display. Being a salesman’s salesman, he asked me to take the ladybug-shaped car out for a drive. I did drive it and liked it. I thought the car was way ahead of its time so I bought one and drove it back to California. This was the first Porsche west of the Mississippi.”

Concluding that he did not need the added weight of a coupe for American sprint-type racing, he sliced off its roof and made his Gmünd-built car into an all-red roadster. He fitted a snug tonneau cover, gave it plenty of negative camber at the rear and compensated for the lost weight by removing one leaf each from the torsion springs at the front.

With his open-air aluminum model von Neumann soundly defeated the formerly dominant modified Simcas in the 1.5-liter modified race at Torrey Pines, California on July 20th, 1952. The race for production 1.5-liter cars was won by Bob Doidge’s standard coupe. Said Road & Track, “The car looked and handled so well that everyone is talking of ordering Porsches.” Many ordered them from von Neumann.

In 1950, when serious production began, Porsche judged that the world market for its cars was no more than some 500 units. From the beginning of Porsche car manufacturing the role of Hoffman and the American market was central to the make’s success. “For many years,” Max notes, “we sold seventy percent of their production.” He enjoyed his close association with all the members of the small Porsche team and especially with Ferry Porsche and Prof. Albert Prinzing.

Making its bow in 1954, the famous Porsche Speedster was a Hoffman-Prinzing brainstorm. “You might have a time when sales go down, “Hoffman admitted, “and you have to do something.” In this case it was a simplified roadster that could be priced well under other Porsches at $3,000 ($36,300 in 2026 dollars) to spark the market. It was born in a New York meeting between Hoffman and Prinzing.

Max Hoffman’s liking for the people of Porsche was equaled by his enthusiasm for the car itself. It was small, light, easy to handle and very much a sports car, like the Amilcars and Lancias he had known before the war. And Porsches brought Hoffman back into active racing. He had competed in a modest way in the early post-war years. With a Lancia Aprilia he was third overall in the Motor Sports Club of New York’s Mohansic Lake Hillclimb in March, 1947.

Bitten hard once more by the racing bug, Hoffman imported a 1,500-cc Glöckler-Porsche at the end of 1951. This was the sports-racing car that had been backed by Walter Glöckler, the Frankfurt VW agent, and designed and built by his works manager, Hermann Ramelow. It had the engine ahead of the rear wheels on a simple tubular frame with the driver centrally seated in a low, all-enveloping aluminum body. Power was by a modified push-rod engine.

At Palm Beach Shores on December 8th, 1951, the Hoffman/Glöckler combination hit American sports car racing hard. John Fitch reported: “Max Hoffman’s Porsche created an atmosphere of its own, spiked with castor oil. Its low, fully streamlined form, sharp exhaust note and very impressive performance, combined with the obvious efficiency of his German mechanics, suggested an atmosphere of almost Grand Prix flavor.” In its two-hour race the car ran away from everything else with ease until it was halted by valve gear trouble after fifty-three minutes.

Max and the silver Glöckler with the blue stripe across its nose were frequent competitors during the 1952 season. It started off well with a class win and second overall in the one-hour race at Florida’s Vero Beach. A win was also scored at Connecticut’s Thompson Raceway. In the fall an entry was filed

for the Mecox Trophy Race at Bridgehampton. Hoffman headed the 25-car field without strain in this important 25-lap event until lap 14, when he went wide on the gravelly School House Corner and shunted the left front corner on the haybales. “I was perhaps going too fast,” Hoffman confessed. “Also, this car was very difficult. On the corners all four wheels went away at once.”

For 1953 Hoffman bought a second Glöckler-Porsche, this one with its engine behind the rear wheels, but he was never happy with it and soon sold the car. Max supported racing in other ways. He provided a trophy for the Palm Beach Shores events and also for the fastest Jaguar at Bridgehampton in 1953. That year at the Bridge he also offered a cup to the person driving the greatest distance to the race in a Volkswagen.

Hoffman was also the key member of a corporation formed in the early 1950s to build a race track in New York’s Dutchess County. John Fitch headed the group that was quietly obtaining options on 700 acres of magnificent rolling country just off the Taconic Parkway at Fishkill. They were planning to go to Wall Street for financial backing until one member of the group, who was also active in the SCCA, fell into such disrepute that there was no hope of carrying the enterprise further. “We were ahead of our time,” sighed Fitch. Just like Porsche.

The Dutchess County circuit never materialized, but in another sense Hoffman’s grand project succeeded beyond expectation. He had gambled that Americans would respond not merely to size and power, but to precision, character, and engineering integrity. Porsche’s rise in the United States vindicated that wager. The partnership between the determined Austrian émigré and the fledgling Stuttgart manufacturer reshaped both their futures—and helped establish America as the indispensable market in the story of Porsche.