Porsche boss sparks fury over plans to build tunnel and private garage under £7m mansion | World | News

The boss of Porsche has sparked fury over his plans to build a tunnel and private garage under his Austrian mansion.

Wolfgang Porsche, 81, wants to build a complex beneath one of Salzburg’s most recognisable landmarks, the Kapuzinerberg, a forested hill and popular walking area that overlooks the city.

He intends to dig out a 500-metre tunnel and a private garage to allow him to park up to a dozen of his cars under his £7 million, 17th-century mansion, Paschinger Schlossl.

The estate was previously owned by Emperor Franz Joseph I and novelist Stefan Zweig. A young Mozart visited it while accompanying his mother on social calls.

Porsche bought the mansion in 2020 and his ownership of it has been controversial since. Originally, councillors wanted to turn the building into a museum or ask the new owner to open part of it to the public.

The Porsche boss’ main issue was access. Last February, he was quietly given permission to build the 500-metre tunnel and pay the city £33,000 to use a public car park as an entrance.

This was only revealed after a municipal election where the communist party made gains over the previously ruling conservative party.

The Communist Party is demanding the local authority release the files. The green party councillors have also criticised the secret deal made with Porsche.

Ingeborg Haller, the green party’s local leader, told Der Standard it was “special treatment for the super-rich” and “left a strange taste in the mouth”.

Bernhard Auinger, Salzburg’s new Social Democratic mayor, told German newspaper Taz, that it would have been “smarter” to have told the public about the arrangement sooner, but it was not for him to judge whether the tunnel was “suitable or morally justifiable”.

The Porsche company, whose supervisory board is still chaired by Porsche, said the matter was a “purely private property issue”. Wolfgang Porsche could not be reached for comment.