Friedrich Indra - a passionate engineer

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Friedrich Indra - a passionate engineer

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Created on April 25, 2019

Text:

Thomas Suter

Photos:

Daniel Reinhard

27

Hallo Fahrerlager

2

Porsche AG / Porsche Schweiz AG

1

DTM

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Archiv Ford

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Archiv

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermeccanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermeccanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermecchanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermeccanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra and his Intermeccanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermeccanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra - not everyone has a car that bears his name

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Friedrich Indra in his Intermecchanica Indra

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Friedrich Indra - he has of course already made some improvements to the car

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Friedrich Indra and his Indra with in-line six-cylinder engine, naturally optimized

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Friedrich Indra with his Intermecchanica Indra at the Ennstal Classic

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Friedrich Indra explains technical correlations

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Friedrich Indra is still closely following technical progress today

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First Super Vee racing car - Jochen Mass wins the European Cup race at the Nürburgring in May 1971 in the first Kaimann Super Vee racing car

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Ferrari Testarossa and Alpina-BMW B10 Biturbo (1989) - two completely different design languages

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Ferrari Testarossa and Alpina-BMW B10 Biturbo (1989) - longitudinally installed in-line six-cylinder versus V12 engine

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Ferrari Testarossa and Alpina-BMW B10 Biturbo (1989) - with wide Michelin tires

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Audi Quattro Sport (1983) - Four-valve cylinder head

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Audi Quattro Sport (1983) - drawing of the engine

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Audi Quattro - Hannu Mikkola on slicks at the 1982 Monte Carlo Rally

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Audi Sport Quattro (1984) - View into the engine compartment at the Tour de Corse in May 1984

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Audi Quattro - Audi Quattro at the 1983 Monte Carlo Rally

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Audi Quattro Sport - primarily intended for sports use and with a shortened plastic body - at the 1984 Geneva Motor Show

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Opel Calibra (1996) - Manuel Reuter in a close battle between brothers in the DTM

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Niki Lauda in Monza, a few weeks after the accident that almost cost him his life

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Niki Lauda, Burkard Bovensiepen, technician Fritz Indra

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Porsche 917 (1969) - on the right, a satisfied Piëch in conversation with Gerhard Mitter

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Ford championship celebration 1976 - Zakowski, Heyer, Kranefuss and board member Bob Lutz

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Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermecchanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra und sein Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra - nicht jeder hat ein Auto, das seinen Namen trägt

Summary

He drives a sports car that - coincidentally - has the same name as him, he built the world's fastest production sedan for Alpina BMW in the early 1970s, and later helped Opel make a brilliant racing comeback with the Formula 3 engines and the DTM models. And that is by no means all! Friedrich (Fritz) Indra is one of Europe's automotive luminaries. This portrait looks back on Indra's life and his greatest successes.

This article contains the following chapters

Engineering career
Racing professor
Formula Vau development in his spare time
Part-time journalist
Head of development at Alpina
Turbo specialist
From Audi to Opel
From the Beetle to the Indra
Profile

Estimated reading time: 16min

Preview (beginning of the article)

He drives a sports car that - coincidentally - has the same name as him, he built the world's fastest production sedan for Alpina BMW in the early 1970s, later helped Opel make a brilliant racing comeback with the Formula 3 engines and the DTM models, knows the Indy Car and Nascar scene in the USA, still advises several companies and today enjoys life with his wife in a beautiful penthouse apartment in a posh Viennese neighborhood. We are talking about Prof. Dr. Friedrich Indra. For Fritz Indra, born in 1940, it was already clear at the age of 10 what he would one day become: In a school essay, he made a definite statement on the subject of "engineering", knowing even then that he would have to study a lot for it, attend grammar school and complete his subsequent studies with a "doctorate". And that's exactly how it happened, in Vienna - in a country that no longer had a car industry - one of the most dazzling engineering careers was launched, a career that, like many others, began with tuning moped engines at a young age...

Welcome to Zwischengas!

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Images of this article

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermecchanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra und sein Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra mit seinem Intermeccanica Indra

Friedrich Indra - nicht jeder hat ein Auto, das seinen Namen trägt

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