Indian Army Test Drives Tatra Vehicles All over India – Passes through Panambur NH

Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SR/SB)

Mangalore, Jun 18: Latest Tatra vehicles likely to be inducted into Indian Army were found test driven here on the highway at Panambur on Friday June 18. The vehicle was moving down south the state from Bangalore as part of the vehicles’ all-terrain test drive all over the country. More….

I bought the lot and with the help of a friend hauled it all back to my spread and started unpacking and sorting. Quite the “Mother Lode” indeed. I have sold a few extra bits to hungry Tatra owners trying to complete their restorations, and managed to buy another lot of parts from someone else and quickly am finding myself in the used Tatra parts business! As for the main car itself, I recently spent some time assembling it and preparing it for display at the annual VW Classic in Irvine California this past weekend.
In hopes of blowing some VW minds I decided to give it a slight drop job and bolt on some custom VW wheels on the front. And to fit in with the VW Freak Show theme of the main display this year, I hand painted some faded signwriting on it to make it appear as it was a promotional car for a fictional Human Cannonball performer, “The Amazing Karaznov” of the Moscow Circus Company.

The response was truly epic…More

One year old news on the same vehicle: http://bringatrailer.com/

Paul Greenstein’s and Dydia Delyser’s T87, one of the classics which is in the NYT most desirable classic contest, has been featured in the newest issue of Motor Trend Classics (June 2010)

http://blogs.motortrend.com/6651202/classic/motor-trend-classic-a-sneak-peek/index.html

Vaclav Lipavsky | 27 April 2010 7:13

In the field, was unstoppable, able to throw the bumper lower house and hold the military in the worst situations. Tatra 813 definitely deserves a place in our memories……….

More: http://translate.google.nl/translate 

Original text in Skovak: http://auto.pravda.sk/na-vyvoj-tatry-813-dohliadala-aj-armada-dsu-/sk-amagazin.asp?c=A100427_071301_sk-amagazin_P39

Are you passionate about purple Pacers? Do vintage Checker taxis set your meter running? Would you write a check for a Czech-built Tatra?

Those vehicles, and 27 others, are among the finalists in the 2010 Collectible Car of the Year contest. Less than a month remains to cast a ballot for your favorite; voting ends May 17. The winner will be announced July 24.

The 30 finalists were selected by our judges from a field of more than 650 entries. Other contenders include a flamboyantly red Jaguar E-Type; a globe-trotting Volkswagen Beetle that was transformed, in Pakistan, into a work of art; several convertibles; a woody; and a couple of remarkable pickup trucks.

To see the winner of the 2008 contest, plus a gallery of that year’s finalists, click here. And as always, feel free to show off your own ride in the Share & View Photo Gallery.

Now let’s go back to the competition, already in progress.

The car looks a bit like an oversized VW Beetle. The front fender is strikingly reminiscent of the million-selling cult-Volkswagen. But Ulrich Platzek from Schrobenhausen does not like to hear this.  Finally, his car is a Tatra 87 – one of the 85 units still around. 

The air-cooled engine roars under the hood of the silver car.  “It does not need to shame for any American sedan,”  Till Klewitz says with sparking eyes.  The 27-year-old actor from Hohenwart has been hit for some years with the same virus as his uncle Ulrich Platzek who has been suffering from it for countless years – the fascination with old Czech Tatras.

Platzek adapted the virus nearby, in his childhood. “My father owned a Tatra,” Platzek says and points in the garage of his house, while walking up and down, at a vehicle that is truly identifiable as a classic car.  “A T 57 , built in 1931″”, Platzek summarizes.  Behind the first family car there is another model from the Nesselsdorf  Wagenbau Factory – it is 14 years younger.  With the first family car of the vehicle it has has little in common: streamlined, silver, with a tail fin on the rear bonnet.  Is powered by an air-cooled three-liter V8 engine, which develops  75 hp. “The car’s top speed is 160 kph” says Klewitz, who began three years ago to master the technology and history of the car.

Therefore, the 27-year-old knows something from the past: “Most of the T 87s, were also driven by the German army ended in the ditch.”  The luxury cars with leather interior were particularly favoured by officers: “And they have also been very happy to press the gas pedal.” And just becuase of this every  Tatra driver should be careful.  The big engine overhangs the rear axle, causing the rear of the car to break out when the accelerator was pushed without thinking too deeply.  He prefers not to be passed by the rear of his own car, Klewitz admits. 

The car is a real head-turner during the short test drive.  On the way to the gas station car the sleek car with its characteristic sound leaved behind all disbelievers. In the interior hardly any wind noise can be heard.  The leather seats are comfortable.  Almost the passenger, both in front and at the rear, like sitting on a sofa. As the engine is located behind the passengers  the engine noise even seems lower than than many  modern medium-sized cars.  Only the gear grinds occasionally. When downshifting, Platzek must double declutch, similar to older trucks.  Shifting the gears cup with the partly synchronised gearbox is much easier as modern cars.

Source (in German): http://www.donaukurier.de/lokales/schrobenhausen/Schrobenhausen-Luxurioese-Raritaet-mit-dem-ersten-Kurvenlicht;art603,2270779

A nearly 70-year-old Tatra T 87, with German registration KA-T 1987 H worth around Euro 120 000 was stolen over the weekend at Ubstadt-Weiher (Karlsruhe area). The collector’s vehicle was transported after a repair on a trailer and parked on a dirt road, the German police announced on Wednesday.
 
The thieves opened the tarpaulin of the trailer and smashed a window of the car. With the help of the loading ramps located in the trailer, they pushed the car on the road. How the car eventually was transported, is not yet clear.

The stolen car is one of 286 produced in 1941 model cars Tatra T 87 Of the luxury sedans produced in the Czech town of Koprivnice between the years 1937 and 1950, only about 3000 pieces were build.

If you know more, please inform the German Police at ++ 49 (0)7251/726-201 or ++ 49 (0)721/939-5555

Ein fast 70 Jahre alter Tatra T 87 im Wert von rund 120 000 Euro ist am Wochenende gestohlen worden. Das Liebhaberfahrzeug war nach einer Reparatur auf einem Anhänger transportiert und auf einem Feldweg abgestellt worden, wie die Polizei am Mittwoch mitteilte.

Die Diebe öffneten die Schutzplane des Anhängers und schlugen ein Fenster des Oldtimers ein. Mit Hilfe der im Anhänger liegenden Laderampen schoben sie den Wagen dann auf den Weg. Wie sie das Auto schließlich abtransportierten, ist noch nicht klar.

Wenn Sie mehr wissen, Bitte kontaktiren Sie den Deutsche Polizei ++ 49 (0)7251/726-201 oder ++ 49 (0)721/939-5555

Source: http://www.ka-news.de/region/karlsruhe/120-000-Euro-teurer-Oldtimer-gestohlen;art6066,389340

Production of passenger and light utility vehicles grew 29.6%

Czech car makers shook off the impact of the global downturn as they raised output by one-third in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period a year ago, trade data showed on April 20.
The production of passenger and light utility vehicles grew 29.6% to 265,985 units in the first three months of 2010, the Automotive Industry Association said.
“The growth was due to higher output at all passenger car producers,” Germany’s Volkswagen, South Korea’s Hyundai and a joint venture of Japan’s Toyota and France’s PSA Peugeot-Citroen (TPCA Czech), the association added.
Volkswagen’s Skoda Auto raised production by 37.6% year-on-year to 134,853 units, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Czech by 110% to 42,000 and TPCA Czech by 2.16% to 89,132.
“We must note however, that in the first quarter of 2009 output at Skoda Auto was affected greatly by lower demand leading to production cuts, while Hyundai was only gradually launching production,” the association said.
Overall production of motor vehicles — a traditional engine of the former communist economy — grew 29.1% over a year ago to 267,040 units in the first quarter.
Lorry output rose by 19.4%, while bus production fell by 49.4% and motorbike output slid by 42.6%, the association added.
In 2009, Czech car makers bucked the global crisis as a recovery at the end of the year helped them raise full-year output by 2.85% over 2008 to a record 975,111 cars.

(Source: Agence France-Presse)

Tatra manufactured 192 trucks in Q1, a decrease of 12%. Unlike 2008-2009, no military order is running at the moment. (source: http://magazin.ceskenoviny.cz)

Journalist Gordon Wilkins wrote that “although it has an impressive performance, it produces in the driver the  uneasy exhilaration which may be got from shampooing a lion.” Consumer advocate Ralph Nader called it the only car that was less safe than the much–oft unjustly–maligned Corvair. The German Army was said to have barred its officers from driving it, lest their numbers be diminished even more rapidly than World War II was already managing.

How are we to evaluate these harsh estimations of the Type 87 Tatra? I found a good assessment to be 14 years of ownership of just such a car. Why did I buy a Tatra T87 from the Honda dealer to whom it had been traded for two motorcycles? I’d always nursed a passion for the innovative experiments of the 1930s with streamlined rear-engined cars. Burney, Stout, Tjaarda, Porsche, Fuller, Bel Geddes, Ledwinka and Schjolin were only the best-known of the many adventurous designers and engineers who saw the future of the automobile in rear engines and advanced aerodynamics.

Ledwinka was 59 when the T87 was introduced at the Prague Auto Salon in the autumn of 1937. Engineer Erich Übelacker worked under Ledwinka to create the astonishingly aerodynamic forms of the T87 and its predecessor the T77 (he had a hankering for sevens). Before he left to join Steyr in 1936, Übelacker completed the upgrading of the first model of the T77a and the design and initial proving of the T87.

Tatra’s T87 was enthusiastically welcomed by the German high command as a big, fast, comfortable courier that seemed tailor-made for the four-lane Autobahns that Fritz Todt’s engineers were building throughout the Greater Reich. Todt himself owned and was driven in one, according to Tatra historians Ivan Margolius and John G. Henry. It was one of the more expensive cars of the day, selling in Germany for RM8,450. A 2½-liter 6-cylinder Opel Kapitän was less than half as costly at RM3,975.

Shorter and lighter than the more cumbersome T77, the T87 was the first Tatra to combine air cooling with a chain-driven single overhead camshaft for each cylinder bank, opening vee-inclined valves through rocker arms. Each aluminum cylinder head was individually cast. Built like a light-aircraft engine, it looked like one when the big rear deck was unlocked and lifted. From its 3.0 liters it developed 74hp at 3,500 rpm.

Modest though this power seems today, its V-8 was capable of speeding the T87 to 96 mph with standard tires and 103 mph with special high-speed tires. This was because the T87 not only looked aerodynamic, it was aerodynamic. A measurement of a drag coefficient of 0.24 made contemporaneously on a one-fifth-scale model seemed too low to be true and indeed was. When an actual T87–Hans Ledwinka’s personal car–was tested in the big Volkswagen wind tunnel in 1979, it was found to have a coefficient of drag of Cd=0.36, still a stunningly low figure for the years in which it was built. Most cars then had a Cd well over 0.50.

Tatra’s production of cars and trucks was integrated into those of the Third Reich’s wartime vehicle sector, the rugged and fast T87 being seen as a useful addition to Germany’s military capability. Among other applications, the Luftwaffe was assigned one as an experimental vehicle. A military police unit that served in Italy and Yugoslavia maintained a fleet of T87s. Production of the T87 continued through the war, without interruption, to 1950. In all, 3,056 were made.

Made in 1947, my Type 87 was externally indistinguishable from the original of a decade earlier, apart from some ex post facto bumpers. It was said to have been resident in the United States for many years after being imported by the novelist John Steinbeck. Later owned by a motorcycle enthusiast who had no difficulty coping with an engine overhaul, it had clearly been driven far and fast.

Piloting the T87 produces a concatenation of impressions. Contrary to popular opinion, there is some vision through the rear louvers–though an outside mirror is essential. Its rack-and-pinion steering is sublime–light, direct, precise as a fine machine tool. Yet its gear shift is redolent of an earlier era with its long, deliberate travel, distinctly notchy gate and absence of constant-mesh gearing in first and reverse.

The T87’s performance is impressive. First and second gears are relatively short, well suited to hilly terrain. Sixty miles per hour is easily exceeded in third. The big Tatra cruises comfortably at any reasonable highway speed. And its top-speed claim was reinforced by the timing of a rebuilt T87 at a two-way average of 102 mph in Australia. The same car accelerated from rest to 50 mph in only 10 seconds, better than the 18 seconds recorded by Vauxhall’s test of a war-weary vehicle.

Handling? Damped in rebound only–and firmly–the T87 copes brilliantly with a wide range of surfaces. Wet roads want watching, but, with sensible driving, the Tatra is a pleasure to handle. And I experienced it at its worst: a rear-tire blowout at speed on the Connecticut Thruway! Substantial yaw angles were reached, but, thanks to the T87’s high polar moment of inertia and quick steering, I managed to gather it up and come safely to rest. So, I have shampooed the lion and lived to tell of it.

This article originally appeared in the NOVEMBER 1, 2008 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

Karl Ludvigsen profile: Karl_Ludvigsen

Ivan Margolius’ freshly restored Tatraplan shines in the May 2010 issue of Classic Carsmagazin. Depending on where you live, it is on sale now or will be at your local bookseller within days.

See: classiccarsmagazine.co.uk