Why Does The Porsche Badge Have A Horse On It?

Horses are pretty rife in the world of car branding. Most famous is the prancing horse of Ferrari, of course, and then there’s the Ford Mustang. Both of those are world-famous and have pretty cool reasons for being there, but what about that third famous horse?

Arguably more famous than a Mustang badge but not quite at the level of Ferrari is the Porsche crest. We’ve come to know that gold, red and black badge to be adorned on some pretty special products – and with a tiny little horse at the heart of it.

Why is it there, though? The reason is less exciting than Ferrari, which took its horse from the emblem of a WW1 ace pilot, and less obvious than Ford’s Mustang taking its name from, well, a horse.

Instead, Porsche’s neatly integrated mammal is a nod to its hometown of Stuttgart, in Southwest Germany.

Since the 13th century, the Stuttgart coat of arms has featured a horse – in its first form, two slightly unsettling ones at that. It became a single horse in the 15th century, and then began rearing in the 17th.

The Porsche logo as we know it first appeared in 1952, with its cars made in the two years before then simply bearing ‘Porsche’ text across the bonnets.

The very first logo proudly displayed the Stuttgart coat of arms, the rearing horse, with the city name emblazoned above it. That idea came to Ferry Porsche, son of founder Ferdinand Porsche and running the company at the time, when speaking to American-based customer Max Hoffman. As the tale goes, he’d urged Porsche to create a badge that showcased the roots of the company.

Which also goes on to explain everything surrounding the Stuttgart horse. The red and black stripes are a nod to the traditional colours of the region now known as Baden-Württemberg, which Stuttgart is the largest city of, with those antlers also nabbed from its coat of arms.

Since its first use, the Porsche badge hasn’t really changed a lot. The shape is ever so slightly different, and it dropped yellow for gold, but it’s in effect still the same thing. A bit like the 911, then.