In the 1940s Ferdinand Alexander Porsche spent his boyhood in the forests around Zell am See, Austria, long before anyone associated his name with a sports car. Decades later, as a father, he brought his own sons into those same woods, gun in hand and dog at heel, on the land surrounding the family’s Heuberg estate.
That part of his life gets far less attention than his work as a designer, which is a shame, because it explains a lot about the man who created the 911.
F. A. Porsche at a Glance
- Ferdinand Alexander “F. A.” Porsche, designer of the original Porsche 911, spent part of his childhood around Zell am See, Austria.
- An avid hunter, he later explored the forests surrounding Heuberg estate with his sons and the family dog.
- The restored estate now includes Flat 6 Ranch and helped inspire the 911 GT3 “90 F. A. Porsche.”
The Hunter Behind the Porsche 911
F. A. Porsche, who would have turned 90 on Dec. 11, 2025, is remembered almost exclusively as the designer behind Porsche’s most iconic car. But he was also an outdoorsman, an avid hunter and a father whose life at Heuberg was shaped by the natural world as much as automotive form. At Heuberg, all of those pieces came together.
The family estate sits above the Salzach River near Zell am See in the Austrian Alps, surrounded by forests of spruce, fir and pine, as well as working farmland. This secluded stretch of Alpine country gave F. A. somewhere to go outside the pressures of the automotive industry and back into the universally sought-after simple life of land, family, and the outdoors.
His youngest son, Mark Philipp Porsche, has described how his father would often head into the forest with his sons and the family dog. These weren’t elaborate expeditions; they were ordinary days on familiar ground, watching wildlife, reading the land, learning and enjoying how it changed with the seasons. It’s an apt detail, because hunting has almost nothing to do with excess. It rewards observation and patience: reading tracks, watching the wind, listening, understanding where and why animals move, knowing when to hold still and when to act.
That’s not so different from how F. A. Porsche approached design. He believed in stripping things down to what mattered, letting function dictate form and resisting the urge to complicate something just for the sake of appearance. A hunter operates the same way. He or she doesn’t need to see everything in the woods; they need to see what matters. Missing it can change the entire hunt.
Family Life at Heuberg Estate
In the 1970s, F. A. and his own family moved into the manor house at Heuberg, which was then a working farm. His sons grew up doing the chores that came with it: feeding calves, tending pigs, fetching milk. And when the work was done, there were the woods.
Hunting gave F. A. and his sons a way to be together that had nothing to do with the Porsche name: no machinery, no meetings, no expectations. It’s also, by nature, universally considered the ideal way to raise children: it teaches patience, responsibility, and a respect for animals and land that’s hard to teach any other way. And the memories outlast whatever you brought home that day.
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Flat 6 Ranch and the 911 GT3 “90 F. A. Porsche”
The estate is still very much part of the family story. F. A.’s sons have restored the old farm, including its historic barn, now known as Flat 6 Ranch—a nod to the six-cylinder boxer engine that powers the 911, and to the family’s long-standing affection for the American West. It’s a fitting name for a place where machinery and the outdoors have always coexisted.
Hunting may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of F. A. Porsche, but maybe it should be. The 911’s lines have been photographed and copied for over half a century, but the thinking behind them wasn’t built entirely at a drafting table. Some of that thinking may have come from the things he saw around him in the woods he loved: the sweep of a mountain ridge, the clean lines of a tree silhouetted against the sky, the curve of a trail through the forest, the way light and shadow changed the shape of the landscape. All from a piece of land his wife once called “the apple of his eye.”
Even F. A.’s own 911 seemed to carry a little piece of Heuberg with it. Created to mark his 90th birthday, the limited-edition 911 GT3 “90 F. A. Porsche” was inspired by the Oak Green Metallic G-Series 911 F. A. drove in the 1980s.
So the next time a Porsche turns your head on the highway, remember: for F. A. Porsche, before there was the road, there was the hunt.
