Tatra: The Most Important Car Company You've Never Heard Of - The Cheat Sheet
As much as owners hate to hear it, the Porsche 911 does have a direct lineage to the Volkswagen Beetle, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche’s “people’s car” designed for the German government in 1938. Teardrop shaped, rear-engined, slippery and aerodynamic, a... It’s also set apart by being one of the last cars in the world to have its engine mounted behind the rear axle. That’s not an easy question to answer, but for a direct ancestor, you easily start with Tatra, the Czechoslovakian company that gave us one of the most enduring powertrain layouts in history, and built cars unlike anything that has come before or... Behind Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot, Tatra is the third-oldest automaker in the world, releasing its first car (the Präsident) in 1897. But right from the start, the company (then known as Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft) began doing... In 1900, 20 year-old designer Hans Ledwinka finished the Type A, a rear-engined car capable of 25 miles per hour. After World War I, the company reemerged as Tatra, with an older, wiser Ledwinka returning to the company in 1921. Under Ledwinka, the company released the Tatra 11, a revolutionary car with an air-cooled four cylinder engine, rigid backbone tube... Source: www.cheatsheet.com
