Family Force 5 Tatra History
HISTORYCar production in the Moravian town of Kopřivnice dates back to 1850 when Ignác Šustala founded a family company to manufacture coaches and carriages of his own design. 1880s brought a profound change in transport.The uncomfortable carriages were replaced incrementally by rail transport. Šustala´s company built some new facilities to produce its first 15 railcars in 1882.An important milestone came in 1897 when the company built the first passenger car in Central Europe, the “Präsident, and in 1898 when the first lorry was produced here. The lorry of payload 2,5 t was driven by two, rear-housed Benz engines, and was a basis for Tatra truck production for the years to follow.A major contribution to the TATRA tradition was made by the ingenious designer Hans Ledwinka, who in 1923 introduced the T 11 car to thepublic. The car design concept was truly revolutionary-the car was built over a backbone tube, carrying swinging half-axles in the rear. This design idea became famous as ” the tatra chassis design” that has been used since.Between WWI and WWII car designers at Kopřivnice worked intensively on a world novelty – the first series-made streamlined passenger car with a monocoque body and rear-housed air-cooled engine. The T77 was introduced to the public on March 5th, 1934. In the same year the name TATRA was officially registered as the company´s trade name.The third milestone in 1934 was the aircraft production startup in TATRA. Even in the field of airborne …