If there is an official sign of a foreign marque’s “arrival” as a collector car in the American classic-car community, it is arguably the granting of its own class at the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The distinction of a featured class has traditionally been bestowed upon very exclusive makes and models. For instance, the 2011 edition of the concours’ featured classes included Maharaja cars, along with Mercer and Fiat. If you’re drawing a blank on the first two, you’re not alone — there aren’t that many ex-Maharaja Rolls-Royce cars in the country, and unless you’re into antique-car tours you probably couldn’t tell a 1919 Mercer from a 1914 Sheffield-Simplex. That almost makes the addition of Tatra to the 2014 list of featured cars seem like a belatedly discovered omission, given that this Czech manufacturer produced more than 100,000 cars and trucks, dating back to 1897
There’s more to the company than imposing government cars moving through the dark of night in Prague. Early on, Tatra specialized in luxury cars that were incredibly advanced for their day. Tatra produced the first aerodynamic car in the world in 1934 in the form of the Tatra T77, a large rear-engined V8 sedan that took advantage of wind-cheating surfaces and engine-cooling scoops. Under the direction of chief engineer Hans Ledwinka, Tatra developed even more advanced cars, cars that arguably influenced the design and engineering of Volkswagen and Porsche before and after the outbreak of the World War II. After the war, Tatra created unforgettable designs like the T600 Tatraplan and T603, staying true to its air-cooled rear-engined V8 roots, carrying over the lessons learned from those designs into what is considered to be its final distinct model, the Vignale-styled Tatra 613 of 1974.
Truth be told, Tatra’s passenger cars really only gained classic status on their home continent with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Up until that time, the marque was cloaked in the same mystique that shrouded other cars created in Eastern Europe. Or in Tatra and Škoda’s case, they got caught on the wrong side of the border when lines were redrawn and allegiances changed. But unlike makes such as ZiL or GAZ, Tatras were already known in the West thanks to their breathtaking looks that channeled steampunk cool–before “steampunk” was a word — in addition to combining novel engineering solutions with a streamlined design language. So its turn as a featured marque at Pebble is perhaps one of the most delayed forms of recognition.
Believe it or not, quite a few examples of Tatras can be found in North America, with a total count numbering just below 100. The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville is a majority stakeholder of sorts, but quite a few models have been scattered throughout private collections, with the iconic T603 perhaps enjoying a plurality among stateside Tatras, followed by its older and rarer T77 and T87 siblings. The earliest and the latest models might be the hardest to find, presuming you come across any at classic car events at all, though Tatras themselves are not as uncommon a sight at concours events as they were a decade ago. For example, a 1938 Tatra T77A belonging to John Long of Toronto took Best in Show at the Fairfield County Concours d’Elegance in 2009, a couple years after appearing in the well-received modernism exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. And, in 2012, the Czech embassy even held an event on its lawn that featured a number of Tatra cars and trucks. So while it’s taken a long time for Tatra to arrive in the U.S., its engineering and history have amazed car fans for generations.
The 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will take place Aug. 17, 2014.
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