Last weekend, Karl Ashley Smith, an architect who loves cars, tweeted about a rare motoring event in Burbank, California. It was a display of five Tatra cars. The images Karl shared on social media were those of a Tatra 87, a Tatraplan and a Tatra 603. I learnt that there wasn’t a Tatra 97 at the pageant.
Disappointing, not surprising
Tatra 97 was in production for only three years (1936-39) and only around 500 of them were built. The car came to a premature end on account of the Second World War, more precisely the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany.
The Tatra cars, including the Tatra V570, an abandoned small-car project, and the Tatra 97 (also known as Type 97), are believed to have made an impression on Adolf Hitler, when he was nurturing the idea of making a People’s Car. Automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche would later put Hitler’s idea to metal with the Volkswagen Beetle Type I, then known as Volkswagen KdF Wagen.
With engines mounted at the rear and characterised by an ingenious air-cooling design that tackled the challenge resulting from the engine’s location, the Tatra V570 prototype and Tatra 97 shared a significant feature with the Beetle. In shape and dimensions, the V570 prototype bore a resemblance to the Beetle. With a central structural-tunnel design, the Tatra 97 and the Beetle also seemed to take the same road to sturdiness.
Hans Ledwinka, the automotive engineer who designed the Tatra cars, and Porsche, belonged to the same time frame and were in a position to influence each other.
In The Ultimate Classic Car Book , Quentin Willson writes: “On Ledwinka, Porsche was reported as saying, ‘Well, sometimes I looked over his shoulder and sometimes he looked over mine.’” How much they influenced each other can only be a matter of speculation.
In the foreword to Tatra: The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka by Ivan Margolius and John G Henry, celebrated British architect Norman Foster presents an account of events that offer a clue into the sudden disappearance of the Tatra 97.
Foster writes: “Tatra sued Porsche, through the VW enterprise, for infringement of patents, eventually receiving one million Deutsche Marks in an out-of-court settlement in 1965. Its first attempt in 1939 through the international court was thwarted by the onset of the Second World War. At the end of the war, both Porsche and Ledwinka were imprisoned on charges of collaboration.” The charges had to do with assisting in the making of vehicles for the Nazis’ war effort.
When Czechoslovakia fell to Nazi Germany, Hitler is said to have ensured that the Tatra 97 and most other cars from the Tatra stables were off production and that the Czech company engaged in the manufacture of trucks for the armed forces of Nazi Germany.
Now, giving credit to Tatra for the beautifully streamlined machines it built, can’t take the shine off the world’s most irresistible People’s Car, aka the Beetle.
In his book Car Wars: Fifty Years of Backstabbing, Infighting and Industrial Espionage in the Global Market , Jonathan Mantle says this about Adolf Hilter: “Although he never learned to drive, his legacy to a shattered world was a car.”
The legacy stays intact
The People’s Car is as much an economic masterpiece as it is a technological one. It’s doubtful if any other combination other than the Hilter-Porsche partnership would have achieved these results.
Mantle points out the marketing and economic prudence behind the Beetle. Much before the KdF Wagen, as the Beetle was known then, hit the roads, a savings scheme to help the citizens of the Third Reich to own one was launched. They had to pay “five reichsmarks a week to the German Labor Front. Once they had paid 990 marks, they could take delivery of their car.”
The enthusiasm was overwhelming. “By 1939, 336,668 subscribers had paid 110 million reichsmarks into the Berlin bank account,” writes Mantle. Over the decades, the numbers have bolstered the Beetle’s claim to being the most-loved People’s Car.
Willson writes: “When production resumed in 1945, the Beetle, now a more friendly Volkswagen, gathered an irresistible momentum, notching up 10,000 sales in 1946, 100,000 by 1950 and a million by 1955. In 1972, it overtook the Ford Model T’s production record of 15 million.” However, what sets the Beetle apart is the way it has reconciled change and permanence. Here is Willson again: “The Beetle has been subjected to a bewildering 78,000-plus modifications through its production life, but has somehow managed to retain its essential character.”
