Welcome to Weissach, to the Porsche test and development centre. Here you will find the test tracks, the engineering offices and the design centre. The design centre will be renovated in 2014. However, they are not located in Weissach, but in the town of… Mönsheim. Explanations.
The Google Earth view above shows the municipality of Weissach, below, and the Porsche technical center in this municipality. The test tracks and engineering offices have indeed been an integral part of Weissach since 1971 and the beginning of the establishment of this centre a few kilometres from Stuttgart.
In this enlarged view, the Porsche Design Centre (bottom right), which will be opened in 2014 and includes a design studio with design construction facilities, an aeroacoustic wind tunnel and the electronics integration centre, is not part of the municipality of Weissach, but belongs to the municipality of Mönsheim (top left), as shown by the municipal boundary (yellow line).
This obviously does not take anything away from the legend of this mythical place on which we stop for a few minutes in this post. Porsche officially acknowledges that, following the expansion of the Technical and Design Centre in Weissach, the three new buildings “are located in the neighbouring town of Mönsheim in the district of Enzkreis. The test circuit (below) is located in the municipality of Weissach in the district of Böblingen. It was the first to be set up here in 1962.“
Since 1971, the development centre in Weissach (EZW for Entwicklungszentrum Weissach) has been developing the sports cars of the future, which today leave the production lines in Zuffenhausen, Leipzig and Osnabrück and are sold in more than 125 markets worldwide. So it’s been almost 50 years since the site was founded, just 25 kilometres from Stuttgart.
The three most recent buildings house the design in particular and have enabled the centre to support all the digital design developments for today’s vehicles. And of tomorrow. Above, the entrance to the Porsche design.
Currently, more than 6,000 employees from Porsche (4,500) and partner companies (1,500) are employed in the development centre in the Development, Competition, Purchasing and related services departments. Above and below is the gigantic outdoor presentation area of the design centre.
And if new premises are a source of motivation, at Porsche they have been embraced by the entire company and the region: “It is said that Baden-Württemberg is the land of inventors and thinkers. In Mönsheim and Weissach, it is clear that this is not just a saying“.
The Electronics Integration Centre, adjacent to the Design Centre and the Wind Tunnel, brings together under one roof the work of Porsche developers active in the fields of electricity and electronics and thus enables perfect interaction between all components in the vehicle. Up to now, the Electronics and Electrical departments have been located in twelve different buildings at the Weissach site!
Porsche was the first to bring all R&D activities together in a single location, enabling the design of vehicles from the study stage to production car design prior to testing on a private asphalt track and off-road course.
LIGNES/auto, it’s also a Facebook page (FR/UK): https://www.facebook.com/lignesauto/?modal=admin_todo_tour
This is also what makes Weissach stand out within the Volkswagen Group. Like the other two main development centres in Wolfsburg and Ingolstadt, the Weissach centre is responsible for modules and technologies used by cars of other Group brands.
But if someone tells you one evening at a social dinner that “your Porsche was designed in Weissach“, then you should toast your glass of champagne and the person you’re talking to with “No sir, you’re going astray, my Porsche was designed in Mönsheim!“
