Why is Porsche called 911?

Before the Porsche 911 was introduced in late 1963, it was known by the factory during its development as Project 901 (a number with no significance outside of keeping Porsche's many projects easily organized; every car under development by Porsche receives a 3-digit number identifying it). When it came time to put the car into production, Porsche planned on leaving the new model as the 901. French car manufacturer Peugeot, however, objected on the grounds that it held the rights in France to any car name consisting of three numbers with a zero as the center digit (though they allowed Porsche to use the pattern on their competition cars such as the 904 and 906). Thus, instead of selling the car under a different name in France, Porsche decided to bump the zero up to '1' and the 911 was born.