Featured Portrait:

Motor Man: Max Hoffman
(1904 - 1981)

Maximilian Hoffman left his mark on the U.S. car market by introducing American drivers to the who is who of European cars, including Alfa Romeo, Austin, Bentley, BMW, Cooper, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Morgan, and also Volkswagen - bringing all of them to America for the first time in significant numbers. According to the Automotive Hall of Fame (Hoffman was posthumously inducted in 2003), he is credited with “handedly establishing the imported vehicle business in the United States.”

Hoffman was also responsible for the development and production of new car models by convincing carmakers that they would be particularly well suited for the American market. Those Hoffman-inspired cars include icons like the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Porsche 356 Speedster, or the BMW 507.

Coming of Age in Vienna

Hoffmann (he dropped the second “n” from his name after moving to the U.S.) was born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father in Vienna on November 12, 1904. His father originally inherited a grocery store but turned it into a manufacturing business that initially produced sewing machines, but later made motorcycles and bikes. Max made a name for himself in Austria first as a motorcycle and race car driver (driving an Amilcar, a French automobile manufactured from 1921 until 1940).

In addition, he was also active as a car importer in his native Austria with considerable success: it was him who convinced Volvo to sell their cars outside of Sweden, and he became the brand’s first European importer. In addition, he also imported American cars into Austria as an agent for a company called Smoliner and Kraky; they brought Duesenberg, Auburn, and Cord (notably all from Indiana), as well and Pontiac to Austria. Hoffman would go on to found his own company, Hoffmann & Huppert, who became the exclusive importer for Lancia, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Alfa Romeo, Talbot, and Vauxhall).

Arrival in the United States - Hoffman Motor Company

Max moved to Paris in the late 1930s and emigrated to the United States soon after the start of World War II. He arrived in the United States on June 1941 on a Portuguese ship, and unlike many of his fellow immigrants, he arrived a man of “high style” and with considerable means. But he did not immediately (re) launch his car business once in the United States; instead, Hoffman first opened a costume jewelry store - not much money could be made with automobiles in the United States during the war effort. Hoffman discovered and filled a niche - many women at the time were active in the war effort on the Home Front, working in factories and in industrial jobs. They earned money, but most were unable to spend it on expensive items like jewelry. With this in mind, Hoffman began producing costume jewelry made out of metal-plated plastic and presented it in a custom-made display box. The business was very successful, and Hoffman was able to build assets.

After the war, Hoffman returned to automobiles. He used the capital he made with his jewelry business and opened the Hoffman Motor Car Company. Wasting no time, he investigated opportunities in Europe to import exclusive vehicles to the United States. The company’s first showroom opened on New York’s Park Avenue in 1947, displaying just a single car - a Delahaye Coupé from France. A talented businessman, he would soon grow his automotive portfolio to include the who is who of European automakers.

His contemporary, famed modernist Frank Lloyd Wright, designed his showroom on Park Avenue in New York City - a showroom defined by its design and clarity and ahead of its time. Wright would eventually design Hoffman’s private residence outside New York City as well.

The Porsche Connection

The first Porsche sports car ever was built in Austria under difficult circumstances in the buildings of a former sawmill in Gmünd, Carinthia. The company had relocated there from Stuttgart, Germany in 1944 due to the increasing impact of Allied bombings on the city. In remote Gmünd, on the other hand, the effects of the war were considerably more muted and allowed the company to carry on. On June 8, 1948, the first Porsche Roadster 356 was declared street legal there. Fifty-two more were hand-built in that location. Ferry Porsche initially estimated that he could maybe sell a total of 500 units of such a car, but he would be wrong - until 1965, 78,000 Porsche 356 were built. A fellow Austrian on the other side of the Atlantic turned out to be instrumental in establishing Porsche cars in the U.S. market - Max Hoffman.

“The love story between Porsche and America is inseparably linked to the name of Max Hoffman,” according to Porsche’s corporate communications. During their meeting at the Paris Motor Show in 1950, Ferry Porsche mentioned to Hoffman that he hoped to sell five vehicles in the United States per year. Hoffmann responded that he would only be interested in a distribution deal if he could at least sell five cars per week. The two men agreed on an initial contract for the sale of 15 vehicles per year.

Both legend and the Porsche archives maintain that Hoffmann impressed upon Ferry Porsche that the brand was lacking an emblem - until then Porsche cars simply bore the name in letters. In 1952, the two men met over lunch in New York City when Ferry Porsche sketched out the company’s now famous emblem on a restaurant napkin, according to official company doctrine (some claim it was Hoffman who did the sketching). It would make its first appearance on the steering wheel hubs of Porsche cars in 1953 and can still be found there today.

The Mercedes-Benz Connection

According to Daimler, a total of 41 Mercedes-Benz Cars were exported to the United States between 1936 and 1941. Max Hoffman started to add Mercedes-Benz cars to his illustrious distribution portfolio in the United States in 1952 and drastically increased these numbers. The Mercedes-Benz American success story that followed went hand in hand with Hoffman’s unerring instincts of what the market wanted.

During a Daimler-Benz board meeting on September 2, 1943 in Stuttgart, Hoffman laid out his view of the U.S. market and criticized, for example, the cars’ color schemes at the time, and also -more importantly- the absence of an open sports car, which he wanted as a “crowd puller” for his showrooms. Upon Hoffman’s insistence, Daimler Benz followed his lead and premiered two new SL models at the International Motor Sports Show in New York on February 6, 1954 - the 190 SL (W121) and the 300 SL (W198) with the famous gull-wing doors. Hoffman’s demand for a convertible version was met with the 300 SL roadster in 1957, when it debuted at the Geneva Motor Show in March of that year. The cars, considered iconic today, wrote automotive history, and according to Daimler they would not have been produced if it wasn’t for Hoffman’s intervention.

Daimler-Benz had its sights set on its own distribution network in the United States early on and had sent another Austrian - Heinz Hoppe - to the U.S. in order to pave the way. In 1957, Mercedes-Benz moved on and Studebaker-Packard took over the company’s representation in the United States and sold the cars through its dealerships. It is noteworthy that Studebaker-Packard was bought by aviation business Curtis-Wright in 1956, a fact that made it attractive to Daimler-Benz, who wanted an aircraft engine business as a partner in the United States.

But this turned out to be a rocky relationship, troubled by mutual expectations not being met; Mercedes-Benz failed to boost sales of the struggling automaker’s own brand, and the company had to declare bankruptcy in 1964. Mercedes Benz got out with a $3.75 million buyout - again orchestrated by Hoppe, who then went to work to establish Mercedes-Benz of North America, Inc. as its own company in 1965 and served as its Chief Executive Officer.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Connection

It was no other than Franklin Loyd Wright, who designed Hoffman’s showroom in Manhattan, located at 430 Park Avenue. According to William Storer, the showroom is an “interior remodeling of the ground floor northeast corner of a New York City curtain wall skyscraper.” Originally designed as a Jaguar showroom, the factory had sent a statue of a leaping Jaguar to serve as the room’s centerpiece. However, by the time it arrived, Hoffmann and Jaguar had already parted ways.

According to Porsche, the two men, among “America’s most influential aesthetes,” shared a common bond, and in addition to the famed Park Avenue showroom, Frank Loyd Wright also designed Hoffman’s private residence in 1955; it would be one of his last works before his death. The Hoffman House is located in the neighborhood of Manursing, Rye, New York, about 25 miles from New York City. The house measures some 5,700 square feet and has five bedrooms and six bathrooms. In 2019, the property was purchased by fashion designer Marc Jacobs. Gallery 3 below shows the aesthetic interplay between the architect’s design and the Porsche 356.

It comes as little surprise that Frank Loyd Wright had a strong interest in automobiles and owned about 80 of them. His prized vehicle collection included cars from Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Cadillac, and Packard, as well as bentley and a modified Lincoln, among others.

Gallery 1: Max Hoffmann in the United States

Gallery 2: The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL in the United States

Photos courtesy of Daimler AG

Gallery 3: Max Hoffman and Lloyd Wright: The common bond between two of America’s most influential aesthetes.

(Photographs courtesy of Porsche)

Select Sources:

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Kornblatt, Myles. 2014. Mercedes W113. The Complete Story. Wiltshire: The Crowood Press.

Landenberger, S. 2017. “Internationalisierung und Kulturtransfer von Marken.” Comparativ, 19(6), 33-49. Retrieved from https://www.comparativ.net/v2/article/view/294

Levin, Tony. 2004. The Complete Book of BMW. St Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company.

Ludvigsen, Karl. 2012. Porsche - Origin of the Species. Cambridge, MA: Bentley Publishers.

Osborne, Donald.2007. “Max Hoffmann Made Imports Less Foreign to Americans.” The New York Times, March 18, 2007, Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/automobiles/18HOFFMAN.html

Porsche. 2018. Porsche in the USA – Max Hoffman. Porsche Newsroom. Retrieved from
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Porsche. 2018. Seventy Years of Style. Porsche Newsroom. Retrieved from
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Porsche. 2019. Made in Austria. Porsche Newsroom, November 6, 2019. Retrieved from
https://newsroom.porsche.com/de/2019/historie/porsche-911-magazin-episode-13-sportwagen-dna-356-gmuend-19077.html

Press Inform. 2014. “Visionär und Autohändler.” Stern, online. Retrieved from
https://www.stern.de/auto/fahrberichte/max-hoffman-visionaer-und-autohaendler-3841018.html

Storer, William A. 1974. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.