Tatra History and Background

Tatra is a vehicle manufacturer in Koprivnice, Czech Republic. The company was founded in 1850 as Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft, a wagon and carriage manufacturer. They produced the first motor car in central Europe in 1897, the “President,” making Tatra is the third oldest car maker in the world after Daimler Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot.

At the end of World War I (1918) a new country, Czechoslovakia, was created incorporating Moravia. The town Nesseldorf became Kop?rivnice. In 1919 the name Tatra was given to the car after the Tatra mountains.

The T-11, launched in 1923, featured a rigid backbone tube with swinging semi-axles at the rear giving independent suspension. The engine, front mounted, was an air cooled two cylinder unit of 1056 cc.

Tatra's specialty was luxury cars of a technically advanced nature. In the 1930s, under Austrian engineer Hans Ledwinka, Tatra started building advanced, streamlined cars starting with the large Tatra T77 in 1934, the world's first production aerodynamic car. It featured, as did almost all subsequent big Tatras, a rear-mounted, air-cooled V8 engine, very technically sophisticated for the time.

After the 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, Tatras continued in production, largely because Germans liked the cars.

The factory was nationalised in 1946 after the Communist Party was elected to power. Although production of prewar models continued, a new model, the Tatra T600 Tatraplan was designed -- the name celebrating the new Communist planned economy. It went into production in 1947. In 1951, the state planning department decided that the Tatraplan should henceforth be built at the Skoda plant in Mladá Boleslav, leaving Tatra free to concentrate on trucks, buses and railway equipment

A mere three years later, amid much dissatisfaction among officialdom about the poor-quality official cars imported from Russia, Tatra was again given permission to produce a luxury car, the famous Tatra T603. A fair successor to the prewar cars, it was also driven by a rear-engined, air-cooled V8 and had the company's trademark aerodynamic styling. Uniquely, the Tatra T603 featured three headlights. Fitted with almost American-style thick chrome bumpers with bullets, the Tatra T603 was an amazing looking car for 1955. Looks weren't all it had going for it; performance was spritely for a large, six-seater car, and the ride was smooth as glass. Almost entirely hand-built, Tatras were not for everybody; normal citizens could not buy them. They were reserved for Party elites, Communist officials, factory presidents and other notables, as well as being exported to most other Communist nations as official cars.

Tatra T603s were built until 1975, a twenty-year reign as Communism's finest car. Numerous improvements were made over this time, but not all the new cars built in this period were actually new. When a new Tatra replaced an old, the old vehicle was returned to the factory. There, it was upgraded to modern condition, refinished, dubbed new and sent out again as a putatively new vehicle to replace another older Tatra. This makes it hard to trace the history of surviving vehicles.

In 1968 a replacement was developed; the Tatra T613. Production began in 1973 and over 11,000 were built before production ended in 1996. Although the layout remained the same, the body and engine were all new, the unit being equipped with 4 overhead camshafts, a greater volume (3495 cc) and delivering close to 165 bhp.

With orders and production almost at a standstill after the fall of Communism, Tatra decided to stop building the Tatra T613 in 1996. An attempt was made to produce an updated version, the Tatra T700; it was largely based on the old car, with updated body panels and detail. Sales were poor, and in 1999 Tatra abandoned the manufacture of cars. Tatra continues to produce trucks.

During the history of production of cars Tatra produced 90,000 vehicles.