The remarkably advanced product of communist Czechoslovakia was produced for 20 years and was created in tens of thousands of pieces. However, the completely original version with three lights in the front mask is very rare.
The former flowering of Czechoslovak engineering called Tatra 603 began to be born in Kopřivnice in 1955. For the next twenty years, the company produced cars that fell into the hands of a number of important people from all over the world . Even the more advanced states, unencumbered by the communist establishment, admired what a small Central European country could produce; nothing comparable arose at the time in any of the surrounding Soviet satellites.
The communist government of its time needed representative passenger cars, and in 1953 it decided to supplement the state fleet with cars from Kopřivnice. The company’s management was given the task of developing and producing properly luxurious large limousines in the gallows deadline – Tatra had only 12 months to get the first results. This is too short a time for it to be reasonably possible to project the drawings into the first prototypes, but the Communists have never bothered with such things.
However, the industrial artist František Kardaus and the head of the design office of the carmaker Vladimír Popelář were not afraid of such a date, as they could pull out car designs from the drawer, which they gave rise to in their free time for their own pleasure in previous years. They developed a project for a car with a rounded body, following on from the previous Tatraplan and yet walking its own path. The first mobile specimen of the Tatra 603-1 was created in 1955 and in 1956 another nine pieces were manually assembled in the factory hall.
A year later, serial production was ceremoniously launched. Especially Western journalists could not believe what was created in Czechoslovakia at that time, when one copy of the T 603-1 was saddled by the Czechoslovak team at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1958. And Tatra shone with the car at EXPU 1958 in Brussels.
The demand for the car was huge, but the first evolution of the Tatra 603 got outside Czechoslovakia only a handful. Even ordinary people in our country did not have a chance to get to the car, because it was made exclusively for party officials in high positions and their friendly counterparts. By 1963, when the second evolution of the car came, only a few thousand cars were built, most of which did not exist for a long time.
Today, the rare first evolution produced before 1959 is characterized mainly by three headlights in the middle of the front grille, which later had to be replaced by four in order for the car to meet applicable standards. The original versions are so highly sought after and one of them has now appeared in very good condition on sale in Slovakia in Dunajská Streda. It was there that the perfect black specimen from 1958 got in its original condition with the original exterior and all parts to this day. It looks really very good, as you can see on the source link, only the interior has been renovated according to the owner.
The current owner is obviously well aware of the rarity he puts into circulation, as he repeatedly mentions serial number 725 – that’s an early piece. For a polished car with an air-cooled V8 with a volume of 2.5 liters and a wheelbase of 2,750 millimeters with the original manufacturer’s label, it requires CZK 2.55 million. This makes this T603 one of the most expensive Czech cars ever on sale.
As we have already mentioned, the condition corresponds to the one mentioned. Despite the original condition, the car “suffers” only an insignificant patina, we do not see any scratches on the paint, only the engine apparently lost part of the 95 horses, which at one time managed to start it up to 170 km / h. However, the high price tag is justified by the uniqueness of the first 603 from the point of view of the history of Czechoslovak motoring – the very three lights in the middle are a sign of something unique. However, only a few cars in history have successfully afforded to place the headlights in other than usual places for them.