» Tatra Classic Car NewsTatraWorld.nl:

https://www.auto.cz/historicke-tatry-opet-pokorily-alpy-po-stopach-nejtezsi-rakouske-souteze-105560

Video: Araun Gordijn paints. The video includes a Tatraplan in a scrapyard with the painter expressing his love for the brand. Text is Dutch, but has English captions.

https://conam.info/nieuws/nieuws-1/3410-documentaire-over-araun-gordijn

The pix below are Tatra-related watercolors and paintings by Araun Gordijn. They are not mentioned in the documentary video.

T77a’s and Gerrit Rietveld designed villa “Rhapsody” in Bloemendaal/ NL, The villa was designed in 1934 by architect Rietveld for the violinist and composer Zoltán Székely in 1934. The name of the house, Rhapsody, refers to a composition by Bela Bartok.

Special house located on a spacious lot offering privacy. The villa was designed in 1934 by architect Rietveld for the violinist and composer Zoltán Székely. The house has many original details.

Rietveld designed his home for the Hungarian violinist and composer Zoltán Székely in 1934. The name of the house, Rhapsody, refers to a composition by Bela Bartok. Bartok composed a piece of music especially for his good friend Zoltan Szekely and his new house.

T87s and Tatraplan in Voorstraat, Harlingen, NL

T87s in the Tatra mountains

Three T87s at filling station in either The Hague or Noordwijk. Cover of Gordijn’s book “Filling stations 1988-2008″

T87 at OK filling station in the North of the Netherlands

https://zabiska.rajce.idnes.cz/Tatra_veteran_rallye_Beskydy_2019?

Unusual is the open Gendarmerie car that Alfred Umgeher from Lower Austria has brought to the Veteran Meeting. His 1950 Type 18 is the sole roadworthy specimen of its kind. Back then, Austro Tatra in Vienna converted half-finished Volkswagens into cabriolets for the Austrian Gendarmerie in a mini-series of nine cars.

1950 Volkswagen Type 18: converted for the Austrian Gendarmerie by Austro Tatra (Vienna)

This particular official vehicle is utterly unique with its hand-made parts such as longer doors and a trunk lid fitted for a second alternator, wider door sills and other adjustments. After two years of reconstruction, the Gendarmerie Cabriolet has been back in use for almost 20 years – with Alfred Umgeher driving the 24.5 PS veteran in style on special occasions.

https://www.volkswagen-media-services.com/en/detailpage/-/detail/HO17–the-formula-for-air-cooled-dreams/view/5237055/6e1e015af7bda8f2a4b42b43d2dcc9b5?p_auth=d0×8P7Uq

http://karmann1952.de/html/austro_tatra_typ_18_a_1.html

http://www.karmann1952.de/html/austro-tatra_.html

http://www.vw-kaeferclub.com/club/autos/restouma.html

Both military and civilian vehicles from the legendary Tatra brand will be produced and serviced in the Slovak city of Trenčín by a special branch of the Czech group.

Tha Tatra brand created a new Slovak company to produce lorrries in Trenčín.(Source: TASR)

The MSM company created the Tatra Slovakia joint venture in cooperation with the Tatra Trucks Kopřivnice group. The task of the new company is to repair, service and develop and produce Tatra vehicles for the defence industry as well as the civilian sector.

Within three to five years, the production rooms in the former Military Maintenance Company (VOP) in Trenčín are to be expanded and adapted, and 100 to 150 new employees are to be hired, head of the Trenčín division of the MSM Land System Miloslav Bobek told the TASR newswire.

“We plan to renovate the current premises and even build new ones, if necessary,” Bobek explained for TASR. “The overall strategy is planned for three to five years, but the first production possibilities will appear in our plant next year already.”

The Tatra brand is the third oldest car brand in the world, and with a hundred year tradition, the vehicles being much in demand all over the world.

“Globally, there is interest in these cars from Asia through Africa, all the way to Latin America, especially due to the high passability of this vehicle, and its performance,” Bobek said, as quoted by TASR. “In the civilian sector, they are especially used in mining companies, quarries and poorly accessible grounds. Four-wheel, six-wheel, and also eight-wheel military cars are attached to the Tatra chassis, as well as special vehicles.”

The MSM Group consists of several plants in Slovakia, with also a branch in Serbia. It focuses mostly on special technology and the defence industry: the Trenčín plant specialises in wheeled and tracked technology, the Nováky plant in ammunition and the Banská Bystrica one on the aviation industry.

The MSM Group is headquartered in Dubnica nad Váhom, where the production of small-bore and big-bore ammunition is located. Around 300 people currently work in Trenčín, while there should be up to 500 employees within five years, TASR reported.

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Tatra is one of my all-time favorite carmakers, and any day I learn about a Tatra I wasn’t aware of is a grand day indeed. Today is such a day, and I want to share it with you. Friends, behold the loveliest, most air-coolingest V8 GT car ever to never be actually made, the Tatra JK 2500.

The Tatra JK 2500 dates from 1954, and while it’s badged as a Tatra and often considered to be a Tatra prototype/study for a possible GT car, there seems to be two different stories about the origins of the car. One suggests it was always a project outside the company, from a Czech coachbuilder called Karosa Brno.

Are those sliding windows?

Another version of the story suggests that the Tatra company itself was found to have extra capacity around 1951, and the company decided to take advantage of the extra capacity to build a sports/GT car.

It was later put on hold and the car had to be finished by employees after hour, a labor of love and excitement.

Personally, I think the first story is the true one – I don’t believe this started as an official Tatra project, and I think this is the case because of some technical details about the car. First, if you look at the front axle assembly, you can clearly see that it’s from a Volkswagen. It’s a torsion tube axle that may have been from a Beetle (even an early KdF or Kubelwagen is possible, given the time and place). There’s no reason Tatra would have used a VW axle in something they were prototyping, I don’t think.

Also, several sources point out that the car originally had an Alfa Romeo 2.5-liter engine making 66 HP– again, why would Tatra build a GT prototype with an engine they wouldn’t even have been able to easily source? It just doesn’t make sense.

What does make sense is that this thing looks fantastic, and once the engine was replaced with an air-cooled V8 from the Tatra 603, everything got much better. Power went up to 105 HP, and since the engine is air-cooled, the whole water plumbing system could be eliminated, freeing space up front (according to some sources) for the spare.

Tatra had built front-engined cars before, and while seeing an air-cooled Tatra 603 engine in the front is odd, I believe Tatra used this same engine mounted up front on some of their trucks, so it wasn’t unheard of.

The car is named JK 2500 after the designer, Julius Kubinsky. Kubinsky had designed a number of other sports cars, including some F1 cars and a Grand Prix car that got wrecked by a truck prior to the race.

Kubinsky’s design is really lovely, and is in many ways an ideal GT car of the era. The big V8 is actually front-mid mounted, behind the front axle, and the car was said to have perfect front/rear weight balance. The long hood/short deck proportions are classic and the low greenhouse and large wheel-to-body ratio make the car feel purposeful and athletic.

The face has that classic big-eyed/fishmouth look that so many GT cars of the era had, and I find it just as appealing here, with the added benefit of the unusual sound of an air-cooled V8 pumping forth from that front grille.

I even love the chrome-trimmed two-tone paint scheme.

At some point it seems that an attempt was made to interest Tatra in the design for possible production, but it didn’t get anywhere. With the Iron Curtain levels of central control over the factory, this isn’t all that shocking.

Kubinsky ended up using the charming JK 2500 as his personal car for around 13 or 14 years. Nobody seems to know what happened to the car after that. Some suggest it’s in the hands of a secretive, private owner, but there’s no real evidence of that. Perhaps it’s out there, sitting intact in some barn, just waiting to be found.

That’s what I want to believe. That the one-off Tatra JK 2500 is out there like a fast, red-and-black holy grail, just waiting to be found by some lucky bastard.

Anyone reading this in the Czech Republic, please take a moment to check your local barns and report back here as soon as possible.