Tatra Retromobile 2020, A Small Company With A Big Influence
Tatra are the third oldest company in the world with an unbroken history of producing cars and trucks.
The company originated in Kopřivnice in the former Czecheslovakia in 1850 and were originally known as Ignatz Schustala & Comp. With the name Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft the company started producing carriages. Tatra Cars, owned by the Tatra truck company, got the Tatra name in 1919 from the nearby Tatra Mountain Range. Tatra produced the first car in Czecheslovakia in 1897 under the name Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft. That’s one of the worlds earlierst, beating the efforts of Laurin and Klement, who started the Škoda car company. The Škoda Type A appeared in 1905, you can read the Škoda museum report here.
The Early Cars
The earliest car was very much the carriage with an engine, but it still had a certain style to it, the Präsident featured a four stroke Benz engine with two cylinders. The example here is the replica built in 1977 by employees of Tatra who were enthusiast about the marque and it’s history. The original is in the Prague Technical Museum, but has had a bit of modification to it, such as an angine change and some suspension work. I visited the museum in 2018, you can read about that here. No Präsident there that time, I’ll have to go back.
The development of Tatra cars is down largely to one man, Austrian born Hans Ledwinka. Hans was solely resposible for the type A of 1900, but his genius started to show with the backbone chassis on 1921. This was to feature under the T11 of the same year.
The Tatra 70 was a large and imposing vehicle with a large inline six cylinder engine. This was introduced in 1933, at the same time as the T80 which featured a V12 engine.
Both cars shared the same chassis and suspension, but the most obviosexternal differece was with the wheels. The T70 featured solid cast disc wheels, where the T80 had wires. Some 50 T70s were made up to 1937 in T37a guise with a slightly larger engine dispalcement.
Only 22 of these cars were built. The T80 was the most expensive and luxurtious Tatra ever made. Tatra finished production in 1935, with apparently one two door convertible. Sodomka of Vysoké Mýto built the bodies on chassis supplied by Tatra.
Tatra, The Streamlined Years
But it’s the 1930s streamlied era that really got Tatra noticed, in more than one way. Ledwinka was responsible for the engineering of the cars and licensed streamlined priciples from Paul Jaray to use in the bodywork produced the 1934 T77. Not only was this car striking in appearance, it was in performance too. The air cooled V8 engine in the rear powering the car to speeds of over 150km/h, or 93 mph, thanks to the advanced aerodynamics.
The T87 pictured in the sand is the same car used on the Eyes of the World tour. It did look to be in rather nice condition, but that’s because it’s usually in the Prague Technical Museum. The car was donated by one of the students, Jiří Hanzelka, in 1959 and has been there ever since. To have this Tatra at Retromobile 2020 is really quite special. The fact that this world tour ever happened with the challenges within communist Czecheslovakia is amazing.
Post War Tatra
After the short lived Tatra 97 (a smaller flat four air cooled rear mounted car copied by VW for the Beetle), the Tatraplan was introduced. Produced from 1946 and 1952, again with a flat four engine, it was the result of the communist government ownership. But, it was still advanced and seriously pretty. The rear fin having shrunk dramatically but still evident. Over 6300 were made and in the later years it was decided that they should be manufactured in the Skoda plant at Mladá Boleslav, who built 2100 of them.
The Return To Luxury Cars
The Tatra 603 was introduced in 1956 and is quite an incredible piece of design. František Kardaus and Vladimír Popelář led a team of design engineers to develop the T603, starting in secret from 1952. Tatra being allowed to produce luxury vehicles again after the state officals complaining of a lack of suitable cars to be driven around in. Tatra took all the innovation of the T87, updating it and reclothing it in a 1950s UFO. The 603 initially retained the three headlight arrangement, but the front end had them in the grill rounding the nose of the car. The smoother side profile you saw on the Tatraplan and the two piece rear window were there. But the rear fin had been completely eliminated. View the car from the front and it is quite something, even in later form, the size of the car quite apparent.
But it’s the side profile is where you really take notice. The spaceship appearance must have been something of a sight on the roads of Czecheslovakia. Amazingly Tatra produced this car until 1975. You could send back a T603-1 to the factory to have new bodywork, so many early cars would come out looking like new ones. Something Eastern European manufacturers were good at doing. Maybe this will catch on again now, why make everything new when you only need to replace certain parts, let’s take lessons from the likes of Tatra and make our modern cars last longer.
The T613
The 1970s ssaw the need to replace the T603 and Vignale of Italy were commisioned to style the T613 replacement. introduced in 1975 the T613 featured a rear mounted air cooled V8 engine, just as before. Now, the displacement was 3.5 litres and power was up to around 165bhp, from the T603’s 99bhp. A more rectangular look being the fashion at the time but still having a certain individual style.
Later cars would feature fuel injection and it was Tim Bishop, an ex- Jaguar development engineer, who develped the T613-5. A ‘westernised’ version with 200bhp and rapid performance. Chris Goffey of old Top Gear fame was seriously impressed. Sadly only four of these protoypes were produced, and I did see one for sale a few years ago. The Top Gear test car was available, I wish I had bought it.
Finally Tatra developed the 700, a restyled T613, with the fuel injected engine. The second generation 700-2 had a 4.4 litre 231bhp engine, but sadly not many of those exist. The 700 was the last car produced by Tatra, with only 75 being built.
Tatra pulled the plug on car manufacture in 1999, and closed the car plant. The trucks are still going and can be seen winning many Paris Dakar events dominating the 1990s. Maybe one day they will produce cars again, that day cannot come soon enough.
Have a look at the Facebook gallery for more Tatra Retromobile 2020 pictures here.
Many thanks to the Tatra museum and Retromobile 2020 for providing the display.
Simon