Thanks '50 Karmann :!:

I know it would be in safe hands. I could follow behind to keep the white van drivers away from the back :wink:

---

Interesting... :shock:

Joseph Ganz made the first beetle? 

---

Although Volkswagen keep very quiet, the truth of the Beetle's birth is becoming more and more widely known. This is from the latest Classic Car Buyer magazine (below), Issue 6, 20th January 2010:

"In 1935, Ferdinand Porsche, heavily influenced by Czechoslovakia's Tatra T97 laid out plans for the People's Car…"

Statements such as this have appeared many times before, in publications and are on the internet. It is the T97, and not any of the other Tatra models that shaped the VW we know. Without the T97's existance the Volkswagen could have been rather different, or may even had not survived with a different set-up. The T97 is virtually the VW prototype:wink:
 classic_car_buyer.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

The creator of the Tatra T97 (Hans Ledwinka) and that of the Volkswagen 'Beetle', (Ferdinand Porsche) were close friends and regularly came together to discuss their cars.

Porsche was under enormous pressure from Hitler to deliver the People's Car. Would you not have swiped some good ideas to get the project running with Hitler on your case:?:

Note the Tatra T97 project was started and finalised well before the VW :wink:

 PorscheMeetsLedwinkaBW.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

This fantastic 1939 Mercedes prototype Beetle look-alike is for sale :shock:

Anyone got 67,500 euros buring a hole in their pocket 😛

 1939 Merc.png You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

I am new to this forum, but joined because of the discussion on Tatra's. I have a Tatraplan and a 603 in Australia. The Tatraplan is a restoration project, but the 603 is registered and I have been driving it around for the past month or so, and it gets better by the day. Here are a few photos of the 603





and the Tatraplan





You can see the similarity to the T97 in the last shot.

Here is a link I have set up for information on Tatraplans

https://photobucket.com/Tatraplans 

Hi Tatrafan, and welcome to the forum. Nice to see the two Tatras and the Tatraplan in the company of some VWs.

As you probably know, but others here probably won't, the Tatraplan was the post-war replacement for the pre-war T97 😮

More mentions of the T97 being the Beetle's 'Daddy' …

 T97 Blog1.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

I'm just realy glad the beetle was developped from whatever origins and ended up the way it did, because one things for sure, I would never have gone to 'Tatra Jam' had it come about.
They are uuuuuggly[-x

---

It is not a Top Secret fact, that Tatra brought Volkswagen to Law in the early 1960s to talk about the Copyrights. When I visited the Tatra Factory muzeum at first, I was surprised about so many VW looking Details on the cars. Porsche worked for Tatra in the 1930s and he learned much interesting Technical Things which he used for the Volkswagen beetle. For creating the beetle, he contactet some engeneers he learned during the years inclusive some who worked for Tatra. In my opinium, Ferdinand Porsche was not the big brain who created everything- but he was clever to put the ideas of the best engeneers together and promoted it.

At the Tatra Museum, there is a Flat-4 Engine in exibition, which looks exactly like an early Kdf- Engine. Build in 1932! And the Engine of the Tatraplan wich looks very close like the legendary Fuhrmann Carrera Engine. Not with kingpins, but all the stuff around the block.

On vintage Pictures of the Volkswagen Factory, you can also see some Tatra 87 and 97 parking in Front of the office.

I also own a vintage Tatra. It is only a Type 603-2, but it was delivered first to the headleader of the komunistic Party and Former pressident of the GDR. It has an aircooled V8 Engine Inside which sounds like a Hoover vacuumcleaner...;-)

maybe ugly was the wrong word, They are certainly interesting animals.
I prefer the more conservative design of the volkswagens, if you could ever call a beetle conservative on the design front:lol: (by modern day standards anyway)
The tatras are just too far out for my taste. Interesting stuff though.8)

---

Further information found on the internet, and I think this is very well put: :beer:

Influence of Tatra
Much of the Beetle’s design was inspired by the advanced Czech Tatra cars, designed under chief engineer Hans Ledwinka. In particular, Tatra’s T97 model shows striking similarities with the later Volkswagen from many angles.
Tatras of the 1930s used streamlined bodies with rear-mounted engines. The T97, which is widely held to be the closest Tatra model to Porsche’s Volkswagen, had a four-cylinder horizontally-opposed (‘flat four’) air-cooled engine, with the same swing axle torsion bar set-up. On a smaller scale, the company’s V570, a prototype for a smaller car, also shows quite a resemblance to the later German car.
But it wasn’t just Tatra’s aerodynamic styling that influenced Porsche. Tatra had pioneered the use of air-cooling in road vehicle engines with the original T77 in 1934. Air-cooling was demanding technologically, but desirable: there was no anti-freeze in the 1930s, so a vehicle could not be left parked for long in cold weather with its coolant in situ. Tatra’s wealthy customers could afford to pay for advanced technology, but Ferdinand Porsche was out on a limb in specifying air-cooling for his people’s car. In the end, it was subsidies from the Nazi government that paid for Porsche’s engineering good taste and brought the convenience of air-cooling to a mass audience — albeit only after World War II.
According to the book Car Wars, Adolf Hitler called the Tatra "the kind of car I want for my highways". In the same book, it is said that Ferdinand Porsche admitted "to have looked over Ledwinka’s shoulder" while designing the Volkswagen. Tatra launched a lawsuit, but this was stopped when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. At the same time, Tatra was forced to stop producing the T97. The matter was re-opened after World War II and in 1961 Volkswagen paid Tatra 3,000,000 Deutsche Marks in compensation. These damages meant that Volkswagen had little money for the development of new models and the Beetle's production life was necessarily extended. Tatra ceased producing passenger cars in 1950, then resumed again in 1954 as a manufacturer of large luxurious cars and limousines under various Communist governments in Czechoslovakia. Even the company’s last limousines were rear-engined and air cooled.
Tatra is now a truck manufacturer. All its engines are still air-cooled, despite the demands of modern emissions regulations. [END]:wink:

Unlike the smaller T97 which is much like a four door Beetle in proportion and mechanical/chassis layout, my T87 is a bit of a monster, to say the least, and dominates my garage (at least it did until Rattletrap arrived 😛 ). It has an air-cooled V8 engine in the rear, and more passenger space than a Routemaster bus. The body size of this astonishing car dwarfs my Beetle standing next to it. Driving this car is an experience to say the least. It has no rear window as we see in the Beetle prototypes.:o

---

:? Yeah,but both of them are too Shiny 'tho.

:evil:

---

Hi All
so just to recap so Mr Porsche ripped off the designs of Tatra who then sued Porsche, Hitler who's bright idea the peoples car was took umbridge to this so invaded Chechslovakia, seems many historians have got the true cause of world war two wrong..

Sort of right. Volkswagen had their arses sued good and proper, maybe they sacked Porsche :twisted:

At least we know Hitler's real reason for invading Czechoslovakia – to stop the T97's production and destroy the evidence:p Whatever, a few have survived though, much to Volkswagen's misfortune :twisted:

Funny how none of this is mentioned in the Wolfsburg Museum :?

Proof stands in my garage though, gave the Tatra T97's air-cooled flat-four a start-up Saturday while I admired its swing-axle layout, sounds exactly the same as one of my old VWs too. Believe me this car is so much like an extraordinary Beetle :wink:

---

I had to move my 1937 Tatra T87 last Sunday to get a certain Rattletrap (sorry Rob, its almost unavoidable) out of his slumber 😎

The Tatra had stood ages and was in no hurry to start, unlike Rattletrap who was eager to burst into life yet had stood even longer :!:

So I had a lot of 'fun' learning about the Tatra's big V8 air-cooled motor the hard way, and got very oily. I ended-up having to remove and strip the very intricate fuel pump that had dried out solid, but eventually got the huge beast running.

It may have been vibration from the very big car, but I'm sure poor Rattletrap trembled with fear once the big V8 fired-up, he didn't look too happy :lol:

I took a picture as some of you may be interested in seeing such a huge air-cooled engine :shock:
 My T87's motor.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

Are those eight spare spark plugs on the underside of the bootlid? 😎

---

Yes that's what they are, not sure why you'd want to carry more than a couple of spark plugs. They're fitted to the rear bulkhead though, the engine cover (bootlid) is huge, very heavy and out of the camera shot – yes, these are strange cars:p

---

This is the T97's flat four engine, a little more like we're used to :wink:
 Tatra T97 flat 4.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

---

Sorry, but I don't see anything that even remotely resembles a VW engine in that pic.