(Images posted at the Cohort by Yohai Rodin)
We’ve covered the history of Tatra and the incredible V8 pre-war streamliners, as well as the later post-war Tatra 603, but the Tatra 600 Tatraplan has barely been mentioned here. It was a slightly-scaled down four cylinder version of the V8 Type 87, and an evolution of the pre-war four-cylinder 97. Hitler initially admired the 97, but then stopped its production in 1939 after invading Czechoslovakia, as he didn’t want it to compete with his Volkswagen.
Realistically, that wouldn’t have been so much the case, as the 97 was a fair bit bigger and considerably more expensive. And Tatra’s production facilities were tiny compared to the million-units-per-year Wolfsburg factory. But nevertheless, the 97 bugged Hitler, and that was that. After the war, the 97 briefly reappeared as 107, but in 1948, the substantially revised Tatra 600 “Tatraplan” replaced it, with a decidedly more contemporary front end.
The Tatraplan had a 2.0 L air-cooled boxer four, with a decent 52 hp for the times, which gave it a top speed of either 130 or 140 kmh (79 or 84 mph), depending on gearing. That was undoubtedly in part due to its excellent aerodynamics, with a CD of 0.32.
The Tatraplan was roomy, and could seat six on its two bench seats. It was exported to Western Europe, Canada, USSR and even China. The largest number of exports went to neighboring Austria, which undoubtedly explains why there was one a block away from our house in Innsbruck, which led to my obsession with all things Tatra.
There were also some high-performance versions of the 600 made, including a couple with the V8 engine from the 603. And a diesel version was in the works, when T600 production was stopped in 1952. In 1951, Tatra had been told to build only trucks, so passenger car production was sourced to Skoda, and after one year, the 600 was terminated. For the second time, thanks to dictatorial powers. It’s interesting to speculate what might have become of the Tatraplan in a Western democracy.
Related reading:
Automotive History: Hans Ledwinka’s revolutionary Tatras
CC: Tatra 603: This Could Have Been The First New Postwar Oldsmobile or Cadillac
WOW! This one shows just what a nice Tatra looks like, compared to the unrestored one listed for sale on Hooniverse!! (Link below) 🙂
http://hooniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/tatra-600-720×540.jpg
Such an innovative design. A longer, more elegant, and better proportioned nose could have pushed these into more classic styling territory. Though that rear roofline treatment is somewhat heavy handed. It would have helped if the overall shape wasn’t so bulbous. On this account, I think this car works best in a colour like black.
One of the reasons I am so hard on watershed cars like the 1980 Citation 5 door hatchback is it looks so sterile, and non-creative, when compared to an aerodynamic shape like this. It’s the same basic body style, but two entirely different interpretations. I know GM was aiming for Middle America, the mass market and lowest possible costs, but some more advanced design and character in their cars would have been so refreshing to see. They didn’t need to push the envelope like this design. They could have justified GM still seeing themselves as a leading design company. I think it was cynical of GM not to think the average buyer would appreciate some more panache in a such a key car. Plus a more fluid shape has mileage and reduced wind noise advantages. Another reason I love the 1980s aero Audis and Fords so much.
Not just the inexpensive Chevy Citation, but the very expensive Tesla Model S looked utterly conventional (including a fake grille) when it could have easily looked like a 21st century Citroen DS … without a fake grille.
Agreed. I find the Model S looks like a stillborn Chrysler concept car from the late 1990s. Only more generic. Not enough individuality for a high end car.
The problem with gearheads demanding “original, class-leading syling” is their inability, or undesirability, of putting their own hard earned cash on said design. The Chevrolet SS comes to mind rather quickly that gearheads screamed for, and then didn’t pony up.
When taking one’s Tesla to the Country Club, it’s all about understated class, not purple suits. It sells well, too.
Umm the Chevrolet SS for one thing is weirdly positioned in the Chevrolet lineup(you know, there’s that other large sedan known as the Impala, which is also a fresher design), and it doesn’t have “original, class-leading syling”. It’s still basically a circa 2006 Holden with a rhinoplasty(one that looks way too much like a cheap Cruze), and any potential N/A customers that would be interested in it are probably somewhat familiar with the nearly identical Pontiac G8 from 2008. It doesn’t exactly seem like a very good buy unless your attitude towards gearheads is “be grateful you even get this”.
I think the Tesla comes off as more of a cross between a recent Mazda 6 and a Jaguar XF FWIW. Styling doesn’t sell that car though.
Matt the point I am trying to make is that gearheads screaming for hot cars is not really a money maker, since although the scream, they tend not to buy.
GM was building the X-bodies around a set of hard points that had to yield four different cars for four different divisions, two of which wouldn’t be getting the hatchback at all.
Tesla faces the same problem as everyone else in the high-end market today, once you’re seen as a popstar/rapper/English Premier League footballer’s car none of the people with the real money will touch you. Which is why so many really expensive sedans since the Maybach and Rolls Phantom are so subtly styled , except for the Mercedes S-Class which is lurching into self-parody with each redesign.
There are plenty of people with real money driving Tesla cars where I live. Lots, old money people. West Vancouver is crawling with them, and there are lots in Shaughnessy, both old money areas.
Teslas seem to be hot stuff among the rich, all right. This is only natural; new tech. is costly until the wealthy “break the ice” in sufficient numbers & someone like Ford figures out how to drive costs down. I don’t know how they’ll do it with batteries, but we’ll see.
Same goes for computers, only it was governments, then big companies who had the need & capital to buy them at first. I have an old DEC price list, & their PDP-8 minicomputer cost about $24K w/o options, & that was in mid-60’s dollars!
The Tesla is also not made of unobtainium. For a base Model S, its within E-class and 5 Series (depends on the model) territory. The top of the line is more in the S class/7series (again, depending) realm. For some reason, I was thinking these things were obscenely expensive, but you don’t have to be filthy rich to have one if you want it.
Hans Ledwinka the designer was one of Ferdinand Porsche’s peers and friends.
Earlier historians put these two on equal footing, except Ledwinka did not have the charmed future that Porsche was to have.
This is the story of so many brilliant minds from Eastern Europe.
Tesla, tsk tsk tsk?
Hans and Ferdi attended university together and the plainly shared the same ideas on automotive design.
This is one of the most clean-lined Tatras I’ve seen. I would love to take a spin in it. Tatras are so exotic in the States that they seem unobtainable, even for a ride.
It’s an unforgivable shame that the Tatra was never exported to the U.S.A. I can see it competing with the likes of Volkswagen and Corvair
Unforgivable, maybe; but understandable, definitely.
Keep in mind that when this car was being produced, we had just lost China to the Commies, the Berlin Airlift was a very ecent memory, Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech was only a couple of years old, and Comrad Stalin was planning his next purge (which was only short-circuited by his unexpected death). And there was this Sen. McCarthy who was finding Commies everywhere in the government.
And there was this place called Korea . . . . .
Ownership of one of these new would have been tantamount to an invitiation to do a bit of explaining to the House Un-American Activities Committee. And you’d have felt like a Hollywood scripwriter afterwards.
I`m anything but a leftist,but if I did own one in the late 40s and if I was called before the HUAC, I`d tell `em that I`m a car fan, and that the origins of this car went back to the early `30s long before Eastern Europe went communist.If they asked me why I bought this car, I`d tell them that I liked its science fiction style,and found its engineering light years ahead of any other car on the road. If they still insisted that I was a Red by association-with an inanimate object, I`d tell them just what Woody Allen told the committee at the end of the movie “The Front”, and damn the consequences.
“The Front” was a very idealized version, done twenty years plus afterwards afterwards, with an aura of bravado that was very questionable at the time. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall came very close to losing their careers, just for politely suggesting that Congress might be a little overly paranoid. And nobody was calling Bogie a Pinko back then. Yet, they still backed down shortly afterwards and kept quiet.
Those witch hunts were for real, and liberals were running damned scared for a few years.
You like to think you’d be brave in a situation like that. Realistically, you’d probably be saying “yessir, nosir” in a very scared voice back then. Unless you wanted to find yourself unemployable for quite a while thereafter. Very few people stand up to Congressional committies, and of those that do, most are well enough off to not worry whether or not they’ll have a job afterwards (Frank Zappa comes to mind as a prime example of someone who could afford to tell a Senator to go shove it on national TV – and he wasn’t testifying in the pre-rock and roll 50’s).
Skoda actually sold quite a few cars in the U.S. during the ’50s. I can’t seem to find it at the moment, but I remember reading a great story online about a dealer who received constant death threats, but kept selling them regardless. I believe the end of the ’50s import boom probably had more to do with their exit from the U.S. than anything else, although a few years earlier or later and things may have been very different.
It’s an unforgivable shame then, that Czechoslovakia, was forced behind the Iron Curtain throughout the Cold War, rather than being allowed on the west side of the Wall.
Google “Yalta Conference”. That’ll give you a lot of the needed answers.
One of the issues was that Tatra never had the facilities for large scale production. All of their cars were built in very low volumes; there were some 6000 of these Tatraplans built in four years, or 1500 per year. That’s equivalent to a few hours’ of VW production.
If it had been sold, it would likely have had to have competed at a level with more upscale cars like Mercedes and Peugeot.
Probably. I can see car buyers who would normally buy a Mercedes-Benz SEL buying a Tatra 603
Wow! I’ve never seen one before, they are beautiful. Too bad they weren’t exported to the United States, I think they would have been quite successful.
A *very* beautiful car indeed .
How much $ are they asking for that one on Hooniverse ? does it run ? .
-Nate
Even though I`ve only seen Tatras at museums and on Youtube videos, I have always been a fan of these cars, especially the earlier 87s. The stubbier looks really work on this model, and it looks like an art deco spaceship from the rear.As one reader has commented, it was a shame that they were never sold in the United States,but if memory serves, I believe that Skodas were sold in the late 50s or early 60s.
Note the kid on the customized bike, completely dazzled by the car but trying to look cool and nonchalant.
That split rear window kinda foreshadows the `63 Corvette.
My theory, concocted this morning over an espresso, is that split rear windows are a throwback to the fragile isinglass view ports in horse-drawn buggy tops.
Horseless carriages (e.g. 1905 Buick) continued the practice and in fair weather, with the top and side curtains down, parents would tell the children in the back, “Don’t stand on the isinglass!”
One of the earliest enclosed automobiles was the 1920 Essex which features a large, single pane glass window.
Sometime in the Thirties, I guess, auto makers discovered aerodynamics and the usual three-box and two-box patterns acquired a competitor, the fastback. Since it’s always been easier to make a flat sheet of glass than a curved sheet, the extra curvature in the greenhouse, both front and rear, was faked with 2 or more flat panes.
I’d be interested to find out, which was the earliest split window fast back?
It also look a bit like the 1st Saabs
You beat me to it. The resemblance is remarkably close…the Tatra 600 apparently predates the Ursaab by about a year.
Well, Tatra started that back in 1933, with the 77.
True, but I never looked at the 77 and saw the Ursaab. With the 600, the connection is pretty unavoidable.
Wow, the fronts of the Tatra 600 and Saab 92 also bear considerable similarity…
Pretty cars. They look like something Constatin Brancusi would design.
Here’s another Brancusi. Modernism at it’s most essential.
From the rear, this is the perfect evil villan car. It seems like I recall an evil villan driving something like this in old Warner Bros. cartoons – except it was the longer version.
I don`t know about Warner Bros, but the longer version could have been in a Tex Avery cartoon, but then again, maybe not.
You’re thinking of “Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events” where the villain drove a Tatra. And the director picked the car deliberately, because it fit the image he wanted.
I would question the nature of the relationship between Ledwinka and Porsche. Seems Tatra was more than a little upset over the VW design, even before the war. The issue was revisited after the war, and I believe VW paid Tatra to keep the matter out of court. Does anyone have any more particulars?
If not exactly “friends”, Ledwinka and Porsche were well acquainted with each other, and on friendly terms. There is no question that they looked over each others’ shoulders. Ledwinka was the more creative, and Porsche was the more ambitious, hence Porsche undoubtedly borrowed more from Ledwinka than the other way around.
Tatra sued over certain specific technical aspects that it had patented; IIRC it had to do with some details of the air cooling system. It was not for a general infringement of the whole basic Tatra design. Porsche had been working on small rear-engined cars for some years, since 1932 or earlier.
There were some very rear differences: Porsche’s design for his torsion bar front suspension was decidedly more advanced than the Tatra’s twin transverse leaf spring IFS.
But probbaly in a reflection of the general amends-making spirit that Germany was in at the time, VW did make a 4 million mark (about $1 million) payment to Tatra some years into the 50s or early 60s. Pocket change, by then.
The key thing is that Tatra was never geared up for mass production, and for that reason the two companies could never have been directly really competitive. The Tatra 600 was a bit bigger than even VWs 411/412. It was essentially a full-size European car, with seating up to six.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
Dr. Porsche called it ‘ Research ‘
Tatra called it ‘ Plagiarism ‘ .
-Nate
It’s unforgivable that Porsche’s Volkswagen was allowed to be imported to the USA, but not Ledwinka’s Tatras.
Who, exactly, should we not forgive?
To the best of my knowledge, there were no laws in the U.S. at the time prohibiting Tatras from being imported. There weren’t the type of stringent requirements and market-specific standards that we have now back in those days. AFAIK, it was only sometime during the ’50s that the U.S. implemented rudimentary safety standards for cars, which mostly pertained to bumpers and headlights. Even then, you could still buy any car from anywhere in the world, have it shipped over and have it modified to meet Federal specifications very easily. There were importers and specialists who catered to this grey market up through the ’80s when the laws got much more strict.
I’m not sure Tatra itself ever had something resembling a dealer network, it’s more likely they relied on private importers as many other smaller manufacturers did. It doesn’t seem like anyone ever tried setting up a Tatra shop in the U.S., but dealers that dealt in a wide variety of imported makes were common then and at least a few of them are known to have come in.
Here’s a used T87 at a dealership in New York during the late ’40s:
And why was there no dealer network established for Tatra cars, like there were with Volkswagens? These safety standards the US govt imposed (and still impose today) are unrealistic at best.
Volkswagen built cheaper cars with wider mass appeal and, from a manufacturing standpoint, had always been designed for high volume production. There was nothing stopping an American importer/dealer from setting up shop selling Tatras in the U.S. (as I mentioned up above, their comrades at Skoda exported cars to the U.S.), but apparently the interest just wasn’t there. They were an obscure, low volume make – just one of many that never officially made it into the country.
What’s unrealistic about the safety standards that literally every single company selling cars in the U.S. manages to meet?
Despite the rampant anti-communism going on in the US pre-Vietnam War, I think you better look at Paul’s comment regarding Tatra’s not being set up for mass production.
1500 cars a year. That’s 125 cars a month. Guessing a 22 day work week that’s between 5 and 6 cars a day. That’s not a production line. That’s a large factory space with a work station(s) set up. Drop the frame in the work station, start bringing parts in, and have a crew of men start assembling the car. Once the car is built, roll it off, drop another frame in place and repeat. Probably have a crew of 10-15 assembling the car, wheeling in parts, etc. We’re talking Ferrari-style production back then.
That kind of production is not conducive to export. Hell, at 1500 cars a year, the Communist Party bureaucrats in the home country were probably on a waiting list for a new car.
25 years later, I tried to get my folks to pick me up a Campagnolo equipped Favorit racing bike on one of their trips back to Slovakia to see family. Despite having an uncle who was a local Party bigwig, they weren’t able to pull it off.
Yes. Also, I think there may have been political reasons for not upping the production line. The Tatra was an expensvie high quality car, perhaps the most expensive car that was available to the public behind the iron curtain. And the question is how public it was? There couldn’t have been a market bigger than perhaps 1500 cars a year, because there weren’t more that had the money and were “allowed” to buy it.
Also, the Russians were a little embarrased over the high quality, and that it was better than their own cars. And it wouldn’s surprise me at all if they kept production low because of that. They couldn’t kill it, as it was a prestige marque, and a point of pride for the pr-department in the communist economy. But I thinkt they kept it low not to embarras themselves too much.
Another fun thing with that production line is the way older cars went in for service. Older cars that needed replacement parts were brought in, totally dismantled, worn out parts replaced, other parts updated for newer specification. And then the car was put back together again. In effect, an old car was brought in and a new car went out, though built up with some of its parts being older than others.
And reading your explanation about the workstations, it wouldn’t suprise me at all if they only had a couple of crews working on a couple of work stations at the same time. Perhaps only one? today, a factory puts together a car in less than an hour. With an output of 5-6 per day, that would need only one crew. On the other hand, it was handbuilt, so it would take longer. But say a handful of workstations? One car per workstation per day?
What you say is true and has to also be seen in light of the fact that Tatra’s main business was always making high-mobility trucks – the cars were, particularly from the early 30s on, a secondary enterprise. In that Tatra was not unlike Pegaso in Spain, or Reo in the US. All made far more trucks than cars (and Reo dropped the cars in the late 30s).
This car would have never made it in America, no way. It is just too weird, and weird doesn’t sell well in America at all. Have a look at the Airflow: it was one of the most technically brilliant cars in its era, a real leap in safety, ride, handling and fuel economy. It fell flat on its curved face.
This was post war, and Detroit could sell about 1.2 bazillion of anything it could pump out the door, and something this specialised could never be mass-produced like the Beetle or the Chevrolet could be. GM even cancelled the Cadet, deciding, correctly, that it was a waste of resources in a seller’s market.
This car would have to compete in the bigger Daimler range, which even by the early 1950’s was pretty good, and even then had a lot more cachet.
Just to add some perspective to that 0.32 figure, I distinctly recall reading that the super slippery NASCAR-special Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2 in today’s other article achieved a 0.37 coefficient of drag.
I’ve always wanted to own a Tatra – any one of them. The specimen we’re looking at here is the “most normal” car they ever built and it still looks like the future 65 years later. As far as what would have become of them in the West, I think Tatra’s automotive business was probably one of those things that could only exist in it’s place and time. They had a particular expertise that was lacking behind the Iron Curtain and much more freedom in dictating what type of car they built because of it. The T600 was their best shot at finding an audience of any size on the other side, but at the very same time, they were fighting the Communist Party, who wanted to limit all Czech auto production to Skoda. I’m sure that led to production difficulties and all sorts of other problems within the factory and company offices. It’s amazing that they survived at all and lived to build the radical T603 a few short years later. Had they been able to work outside of those confines, I’m not so sure they would have been able to resist normalcy. FWIW, Tatra did it “all the way” right until their very end.
If memory serves, and as long we are on the subject of Tatras, Isn`t that a Tatra parked by the hydro-electric plant in the beginning and end of David Lean`s “Doctor Zhivago”?
This car was owned by the Czech embassy to Israel until Czechoslovakia (as it was then) broke its diplomatic relationship with Israel after the 1967 war (upon orders from the Kremlin obviously). It was then sold to an Israeli and deteriorated to the state seen in the pic below (from an old Israeli classic car club magazine), so you can imagine how much work was required to bring it to the current standard – all of which I believe carried out in Israel. Yohay has more pics here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/yohai90/sets/72157634263484537/
and a short video, demonstrating how very VW Beetle-like it sounds…
So if I had shown up at the Tatra factory waving hundred-dollar bills around, I could conceivably have taken one home with me? (I’m sure after explaining how I got thru the “Iron Curtain”, etc. I thought the government used all these for Party officials or something.
You could have instead gone to an Austrian, Dutch or Belgian dealer: the Tatraplan was offered in all three countries to paying public…
Beautiful car, especially in black. It reminds me of Chrysler Airflow mixed with VW Beetle. I like it. Probably quite a bit better handling then the Type 87 with it’s heavy V8 hanging off the rear.