Carriages for the Emperor

Lohner began in 1821 as a Viennese carriage works, founded by the wagon-maker Heinrich Lohner and the saddler Ludwig Laurenzi. Under Heinrich’s son Jacob it became a coachbuilder of world repute and purveyor to the imperial court. Ludwig Lohner, the next generation, bet on self-propelled vehicles and in 1898 hired a young engineer called Ferdinand Porsche. Their battery-driven Lohner-Porsche, with motors in the wheel hubs, was a sensation at the 1900 Paris World Fair, and the firm went on to petrol-electric hybrids.

Pfeilflieger and flying boats

In 1909 Lohner turned to aircraft and quickly became one of Austria-Hungary’s leading producers. It built 36 improved Etrich Taube monoplanes from about 1912, then its own swept-wing Pfeilflieger, or arrow flier, and a family of flying boats for the navy. By the end of the First World War Lohner had built 685 landplanes and seaplanes. When Italian forces captured the Type L flying boat L.40 intact near Porto Corsini, Macchi copied it and had its own L.1 flying within a month.

Trams, scooters and Bombardier

The Treaty of Saint-Germain banned aircraft building in German Austria, and Lohner switched to trams and car bodies. During the Anschluss it made aircraft wings again. After 1945 came scooters such as the L 125 and the Sissy moped, a 1959 merger with the engine maker Rotax, and in 1970 a takeover by Canada’s Bombardier. The Floridsdorf works built trams until 2008; Rotax engines now power a large share of the world’s light aircraft.

Factories

• Floridsdorf works · Vienna-Floridsdorf — 30,000 square metre site; aircraft, then trams until 2008

People

• Ludwig Lohner · owner 1887–1925 — Took the firm into cars and aircraft
• Ferdinand Porsche · engineer 1898–1905 — Designed the Lohner-Porsche electric car

Records and firsts

• Lohner-Porsche of 1900 among the first hybrid petrol-electric cars