High automotive points go to anyone knowing the name of the third oldest automotive producer with an unbroken manufacturing history. Yes, it really is this Czech company from KopYivnice - established back in 1850 under a different name and which became a car manufacturer in 1897, just after Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot. One of its all-time greatest vehicles is the Tatra T87 we see Jay Leno praising in the video embedded below.
We love how Jay constantly highlights his love for cars – he even says during a 2011 Popular Mechanics presentation of the car that he waited around two decades to get his hands on this T87 example. So, apart from the three-headlight assembly, what exactly makes this model so special and infamous?
Well, if you ask anyone who is an automotive designer, they will tell you the special part is all about its incredible aerodynamics. It was very much ahead of its time with a drag coefficient of 0.36. Basically, this 1938 automobile was on par with 1994-99 Toyota Celica Convertible or a 1985-92 Volkswagen Jetta.
If you specifically ask the Mercedes-AMG One stylists, they will go on for hours about the top-level cornering stability and clean airflow advantages of that rear-end visibility killing shark-fin wing. Or you could enter an argument with American-car aficionados and try to explain how the 85-horsepower air-cooled 2.9-liter V8 could propel the luxury sedan to over 100 miles per hour or cruise leisurely at 60 mph and still return 20 mpg. In case the figure is a little odd, we can tell you that large six-passenger cars of the era were good for just 6 to 9 mpg.
Everything with this car is a hidden Easter Egg. The first body design belongs to pioneer automobile streamlining engineer Paul Jaray – the man who also penned Germany’s Graf Zeppelin dirigibles.
Final word came from Austrian Hans Ledwinka, among others, and he is most famous for convincing Tatra to sue Ferdinand Porsche because the Beetle borrowed too much from his later designs. But the darkest secret of the Tatra T87 referenced by Leno has to do with the car’s notorious (though completely unintentional, according to historians) predisposition to kill high-ranking Nazi officers during the Second World War.
This is because of the car’s remarkably high maximum speed for the era and rear-heavy architecture – imagine an early Porsche’s 356 tendency to spin the rear out of control at the slightest provocation and the fact that a T87 was around twice as long...
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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