4 door speedster mixed with a bug...

I have never seen this, so i thought i would share:

http://www.tatraplan.co.uk/

There is a nice collection of Tatra cars at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, TN. One of the posted descriptions of the car stated that they had rather dangerous handling characteristics if driven carelessly due to the rear engine configuration. There was even a tidbit that Hitler ordered his young officers not to drive them due to this problem. I guess there were cases of tanked up young soldiers crashing and being killed in them.

Hans Ledwinka was another automotive genius, right in there with Porsche, Jano, and a dozen others in pre-WWII Europe. Too bad he ended up on the wrong end of a war. People like him are abused and taken advantage of by manipulative governments seeking a technology edge for all the wrong reasons.

While flying out to San Diego on business Sunday, I picked up a Classic & Sports Car (British magazine) that included an article on the original Saab prototype. It looks exactly like a 3/4 scale model of the early Tatra with only two doors. Of course it was way different (front engine/front wheel drive), but the visual similarity is striking.

Probably the man who was most screwed during pre-war Europe was Josef Ganz. He was the real father of the Volkswagen and had a car built in the late twenties. He even called it a "kafer"(beetle in German). All documentation was seized and suppressed by you guessed it, Uncle Adolf. Porsche derived his car from Ganz's plans and got all the funding, glory and what have you.

Josef Ganz ended up fleeing to Switzerland and eventually Australia in fear of his life as he happened to be Jewish. Hitler would not allow his "Peoples Car" be fathered by a Jew. It musta been really crazy scary back then in Germany.

After the war, Ganz approached VW for his rightful cut of the pie. VW graciously awarded him 1500 British pounds and showed him the door.

Little known story!

~WB

You can realy see the simularities of this car and the Tucker.

I just wonder who was copying who ideas. Its also very simular!!

In the midst of a winter read, "Power behind the wheel, creativity and the evolution of the automobile". Excelent commentary on how automobiles changed industry and society, and vice-versa. Air cooled and water cooled engines by 1900. Inline six by 1902. Straight 8 and V-8 by 1903. 4 wheel drive and tubular steel frame by 1900. Adjustable wteering wheel by 1902. Hydraulic disc brakes by 1903. Fully automatic trans by 1914. Uni-body construction by 1922. Front wheel drive coupled with V8 and fully automatic trans by 1936. The 1900 Mercedes had a power to weight ratio of 15 to 1, about what our speedys have today. The four stroke cycle for engines "theorized" by Roches in 1862 and finally built by Otto in 1878.

It's amazing how old most of these features are, but to point, it took 100 years to refine them to be bullet proof as they are today.