TATRA Type 77. The first Tatras were built in 1923, having succeeded the Nesselsdorf cars built befo

The first Tatras were built in 1923, having succeeded the Nesselsdorf cars built before that time. All Tatras have been built in Koprivnice in Czechoslovakia, but as this town was called Nesselsdorf and was in Austria, before and during World War I, the connection becomes a little more clear. Tatra's distinguished designer was Hans Ledwinka, who had started his career with Nesselsdorf at the end of the 19th century. He had, however, left that concern to join Steyr during the war, and only returned to the renamed town to design the first true Tatra of 1923. Right from the start, Ledwinka's cars exhibited their pedigree and his personal likes in motor car design. The first Type 11 used an air-cooled 'vee' engine and swing-axle rear suspension. Even though its engine was at the front, these traits were to be continued forward for generation after generation. The backbone chassis frame, similarly, was a Ledwinka trade-mark. Things progressed in logical fashion until the 1930s, when Tatra startled the entire motor car world by announcing the brand-new Type 77 machine. Not only was it a vee-engined air-cooled car, with backbone chassis and swing-axle suspension, but the engine was at the rear, overhung behind the line of the back wheels, and the full-width body was streamlined in a more successful style than that of Chrysler's Airflow, which had preceded it. The Type 77 was the first of a whole family of Tatras, traces of which can still be seen in modern examples built in Czechoslovakia for the Communist party leaders who are the only Czechs able to run them. The backbone chassis tube was forked at its rear and embraced an air-cooled 90-degree V8 engine. The power pack, unusually for its time, but familiarly today, had the engine behind the line of the transaxle and the gearbox ahead of it, so that the gear linkage could pass through the backbone tube to a lever between the front seats. The rear suspension, as in so many subsequent rear-engine designs, featured a massively wide transverse leaf spring clamped to the top of the axle case and fixed to hub carriers at each side; along with the fixed length half-shafts this gave the car swing-axle rear suspension. The Type 77 was a big car in every way. It was as long from bumper to bumper as a Rolls-Royce of the 1970s and weighed about 3,7001b (1,678kg) without passengers, so its engine had to work hard to give it a respectable performance. Maximum speed was of the order of 85mph (or more than 90mph when an enlarged 3,400cc engine was fitted).

Handling was not very good — a combination of the heavy rear engine and the swing-axle suspension did not help. — but there was an astonishing amount of space by conventional standards. The absence of a normal chassis frame was a great advance, of course, and the full width styling did the rest. During the 1930s the Type 77 family was steadily improved and expanded. After the Type 77A came the Type 87, in which the engine became 2,970cc again, but with a lot of weight taken out of the car, and power output boosted to about 75bhp, maximum speeds of up to 100mph were claimed. A sister car, the Type 97, with the same basic body but with a new horizontally opposed four-cylinder 1,760cc engine, produced only 40bhp. After the German occupation in 1939, private car manufacture was discouraged, and the factory was turned over to truck production, although there were Type 87 models on sale until 1941. Tatra's factories were nationalised by the Communist Czech state in 1945 and the Type 87 rear-engined car was put back into production. The engine pedigree of the Type 77/87/97 family was lost in 1948 when the Tatraplan 600 appeared, but even this car was based on the same structure and chassis engineering. Production was transferred to Mlada Boleslav from Koprivnice, to make way for expanded truck production, and sales of cars continued to be restricted to Czechoslovakia and her immediate friendly neighbours. There was even a gap between 1954 and 1957 when no private cars were made at all, but the new Type 603, which still subscribed to the well-known Ledwinka layout was then introduced, with a 2,472cc rear-mounted air-cooled V8 engine. This car, in much restyled and much modernise form, is now known as the T613, and surviv with a 3.4-litre engine. A classic, if unconve tional strain.

Type 77, built from 1934 to 1937 Built by: Ringhoffer-Tatra-Werke AG, Czecho-slovakia Engine: Eight cylinders, in 90-degree vee-formation, in three-bearing cast-iron block/ crankcase, cylinder block with fins and air-cooling. Bore and stroke 75mm by 84mm, 2,970cc (2.95 x 3.31 in, 181.2cu.in). Two de-tachable cylinder heads. Two overhead valves per cylinder, and operated by pushrods and rockers from single camshaft mounted in centre of cylinder-block 'vee'. Single down-draught Zenith carburettor. Dry-sump lubrication. Maxi-mum power 60bhp at 3,500rpm. Transmission: Single-dry-plate clutch and four-speed manual gearbox (without synchro-mesh), both in transaxle and in unit with rear-mounted engine. Clutch behind line of rear wheels, and gearbox ahead of that line. Remote-control central gearchange. Spiral-bevel diffe-rential. Exposed, universally jointed drive shafts to rear wheels. Chassis: Tubular-section steel backbone chassis frame, with full-width four-door saloon body shell fixed to it. Independent front suspension by transverse leaf spring and control links. Rear suspension by transverse leaf spring and swing-ing half axles. Four-wheel, hydraulically operated drum brakes. Pressed-steel-disc wheels. 16 x45 tyres. Dimensions: Wheelbase 10ft 4in (315cm), tracks (front and rear) 4ft 3in (129.5cm). Overall length 16ft 11 in (515.6cm). Unladen weight 3,700lb (1.678kg).

The rear-engined Type 77 Tatra, one of the most famous designs ever to come from Hans Ledwinka's drawing board. It was made in restricted numbers in Czechoslovakia, yet contained many advanced features. The engine was an air-cooled vee-8 at the rear, the style of body full-width, and there was al/-independent suspension from a tubular steel backbone chassis frame. The wind-cheating qualities were good, but the car was heavy and handled rather badly.