Moodys has down graded KCB therefore CSOB due to debt repayment problems..
(Malcolm Douglas)
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Tatra shareholder in debt repayment problems
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Tatraplan among many passed away marques
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Tatra Phoenix tested in NL
The first Tatra Phoenix has arrived in NL for testing. It will be supplied by selected DAF dealers
Text: http://www.bouwmachineweb.com/reportages/46-impressies/1956-gespot-tatra-phoenix-in-nederland.html
Photos: http://www.bouwmachineweb.com/fotos/thumbnails.php?album=178
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Vaclav Havel passes away
Václav Havel, the first post-Communist president of both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, known worldwide as a promoter of human rights, died on Sunday morning, likely due to complications from a recent bout of his chronic respiratory illness. Havel, who turned 75 in October, had been in a fragile state since checking in to the Central Military Hospital in Prague in early March, and was seldom seen in public in recent months. His wife, actress Dagmar Havlová, and several nuns were at his bedside when he died, Czech public television reported.
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Two Czechs to be accused of corruption in Tatra lorries case
published: 30.11.2011, 12:17 | updated: 30.11.2011 12:19:06
Ostrava – The Czech police will accuse two men over alleged corruption during the purchase of the Tatra lorries for the military in the days to come, state attorney Dusan Taborsky confirmed to CTK today.
The investigation has ended and the work of the special Tatra police team is over, said Taborsky, who has refused to disclose the identity of the accused persons.
The case was stirred up by former U.S. ambassador William Cabaniss to the Czech Republic last year. Being a representative of the Tatra lorry-maker, he said then Czech deputy defence minister Martin Bartak asked him for millions of dollars in 2008 in exchange for securing that Tatra will have no problems with a lucrative order.
The press alleged in the past that also arms dealers Petr Ptacek and Michal Smrz were involved in the case besides Bartak. All three have dismissed any guilt.
The information on the two accusations was also confirmed by the spokesman for the Office for Uncovering Corruption and Financial Crime, Jaroslav Ibehej.
“I can confirm that as of today, the work of the Tatra team has ended. Besides, I can confirm the information that criminal proceedings against two persons were started on the order of the state attorney,” Ibehej said.
Taborsky said the interest of the Praga company had been behind everything.
It cooperated with Tatra as a supplier of car component parts.
In mid-December 2006, Tatra signed a contract on the delivery of the lorries for 2.7 billion crowns with the Defence Ministry.
However, a few months later, Tatra terminated the contract over what it called Praga’s low-quality components.
“Tatra terminated the contract with the supplier. Praga felt wronged and tried to return to the game,” Taborsky said, adding that Praga could have earned hundreds of million crowns thanks to Tatra’s deliveries for the military.
After the cooperation with Tatra was ended, the deliveries for the military started facing problems. Cabaniss said the money allegedly mentioned by Bartak in the USA was to resolve them.
Tatra managers were contacted by three people in this connection. Along with Bartak, who discussed the order during his official visit to the USA, it was allegedly also Praga’s representative Ptacek.
Tatra chief Ronald Adams said earlier he had been visited by the agent of a “senior personality” and demanded a five-million bribe in connection with the deal.
Adams said the man had been Smrz.
Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/zpravy/two-czechs-to-be-accused-of-corruption-in-tatra-lorries-case/722044
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Mercedes Benz Actros truck of the year, Tatra runner up
The closest candidate for the award were the Czech Tatra Phoenix, which got 67 points, followed by the Scania Euro 6, which received 50 points. The jury believed the Actros provides the greatest contribution to modern road transport for the upcoming …
http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp%3Fnews_id%3D75401%26news_category_id%3D2&ct=ga&cad=CAcQAhgAIAAoATACOAJAm5XO9gRIAVAAWABiAmVu&cd=Kn-8Og2uN_o&usg=AFQjCNHbuA1J6wIpHzgPv_NnIP1sqo0M6g
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Jay Leno on art cars
I hate art cars! When I was younger I remember there was a series of BMWs that were painted by artists. I remember thinking that if I had that car I would take all that crap off and repaint it. I like to see what a designer and engineer and a company put out. They go, here’s our best product, here’s the colour we think it looks best in. That’s what I like.
Yet I like art very much. I can’t imagine going into an art gallery and seeing an Andy Warhol painting and saying, I’m going to draw a Jaguar or a picture of a Mercedes on that. People would hit the roof. To me the two do not go together. At all.
I’ve never seen an art car that looked better after the artist had finished with it. It always looked worse to me because they don’t follow the lines of the vehicle and they don’t have any respect for the design of the car. Consequently any sort of depth perception that you get from the way the fender rolls in or out is completely lost because the artist is just painting on a car, he’s not taking the designer’s vision or the aerodynamics into account. But that’s me. When I sit down to eat, I don’t want my mashed potatoes touching my steak, touching my peas. I keep them all separate. I’m the same way with my car. A picture of Marilyn Monroe’s face going down the road at 70mph does nothing for me.
My favourite cars are one man’s vision – WO Bentley, Duesenberg – one man’s interpretation of what it is. When I look at art, I like to look at one artist’s idea of what they do.
I think the closest you would have a car designer and artist come together would probably be Voisin. He was an artist, he was an engineer, he was a designer and his cars look like nothing else out there. His cars are as close to Salvador Dali going down the road as you could get. They’re not particularly symmetrical, they look oddly different, yet they function as an automobile and everything in the car has a purpose. The roll-back roof of one of those Voisins is a fascinating thing to watch.
I also think of Buckminster Fuller, who designed the Dymaxion. That’s art and engineering. And Bill Stout, with the Stout Scarab, although he was more of an airplane engineer, made something that is stunningly beautiful and art deco. I wouldn’t want to see Andy Warhol take Bill Stout’s Scarab and paint it. It just clashes. They don’t have the same vision. They don’t go together.
I think what Peter Stevens, the McLaren F1 designer, does is art. And if you look at the shift link of a McLaren, that looks like art to me, the way everything interconnects and the way it moves.
Like the choices an artist makes from his palette, the colour of a car is so important to the mood and feel of it. I was a bit taken aback when I saw the new Jaguar XKR-S in French Blue. I immediately thought: no. That’s wrong. Jaguars are not this colour. Then I used it for a week. And it grew on me. The bright blue accentuates the lines of the car nicely. Two years ago, when I was at the Aston Martin factory and we saw the One-77, they worked very hard to get the perfect colour. A sort of a steel-bluish colour. People spent hours looking at it to see how the sunlight flowed over the fenders. The artists and designers work very hard to get what they feel is the perfect look for this car, and people spend hours doing that to the interiors too. Should this bezel be chrome? Brushed aluminium?
There’s a reason body designers ask for the body of the car in white. It’s an absence of colour and, if it looks good in white, you’ve got yourself a good-looking car. The number of XK120 Jags I see that are white always amazes me; mine is white, it’s one of the few cars that look good in that colour. When I see a Toyota Camry or something in white, it looks like an appliance.
The cars I have which I regard as pieces of art are the Lancia Aurelia, the Tatra, the Cord, the Jag XK120 coupé and any Bugatti. But getting cars regarded as art is still a fight. I was just up at the Portland Museum of Art and, kicking and screaming, they brought in about 18 cars on display. There was a lot of animosity towards the idea but it turned out to be their biggest attendance ever. People were taken aback by viewing cars as art. A lot of the old-school people thought it was an awful idea but people really flocked to it.
It’s nice to see the automobile being appreciated as art. A Ferrari just went at auction for .4 million. That’s a crazy amount of money, but then a little Monet or painting that hangs on the wall goes for 0 million. Wouldn’t you rather have one you could use, and drive around?
Yet I like art very much. I can’t imagine going into an art gallery and seeing an Andy Warhol painting and saying, I’m going to draw a Jaguar or a picture of a Mercedes on that. People would hit the roof. To me the two do not go together. At all.
I’ve never seen an art car that looked better after the artist had finished with it. It always looked worse to me because they don’t follow the lines of the vehicle and they don’t have any respect for the design of the car. Consequently any sort of depth perception that you get from the way the fender rolls in or out is completely lost because the artist is just painting on a car, he’s not taking the designer’s vision or the aerodynamics into account. But that’s me. When I sit down to eat, I don’t want my mashed potatoes touching my steak, touching my peas. I keep them all separate. I’m the same way with my car. A picture of Marilyn Monroe’s face going down the road at 70mph does nothing for me.
My favourite cars are one man’s vision – WO Bentley, Duesenberg – one man’s interpretation of what it is. When I look at art, I like to look at one artist’s idea of what they do.
I think the closest you would have a car designer and artist come together would probably be Voisin. He was an artist, he was an engineer, he was a designer and his cars look like nothing else out there. His cars are as close to Salvador Dali going down the road as you could get. They’re not particularly symmetrical, they look oddly different, yet they function as an automobile and everything in the car has a purpose. The roll-back roof of one of those Voisins is a fascinating thing to watch.
I also think of Buckminster Fuller, who designed the Dymaxion. That’s art and engineering. And Bill Stout, with the Stout Scarab, although he was more of an airplane engineer, made something that is stunningly beautiful and art deco. I wouldn’t want to see Andy Warhol take Bill Stout’s Scarab and paint it. It just clashes. They don’t have the same vision. They don’t go together.
I think what Peter Stevens, the McLaren F1 designer, does is art. And if you look at the shift link of a McLaren, that looks like art to me, the way everything interconnects and the way it moves.
Like the choices an artist makes from his palette, the colour of a car is so important to the mood and feel of it. I was a bit taken aback when I saw the new Jaguar XKR-S in French Blue. I immediately thought: no. That’s wrong. Jaguars are not this colour. Then I used it for a week. And it grew on me. The bright blue accentuates the lines of the car nicely. Two years ago, when I was at the Aston Martin factory and we saw the One-77, they worked very hard to get the perfect colour. A sort of a steel-bluish colour. People spent hours looking at it to see how the sunlight flowed over the fenders. The artists and designers work very hard to get what they feel is the perfect look for this car, and people spend hours doing that to the interiors too. Should this bezel be chrome? Brushed aluminium?
There’s a reason body designers ask for the body of the car in white. It’s an absence of colour and, if it looks good in white, you’ve got yourself a good-looking car. The number of XK120 Jags I see that are white always amazes me; mine is white, it’s one of the few cars that look good in that colour. When I see a Toyota Camry or something in white, it looks like an appliance.
The cars I have which I regard as pieces of art are the Lancia Aurelia, the Tatra, the Cord, the Jag XK120 coupé and any Bugatti. But getting cars regarded as art is still a fight. I was just up at the Portland Museum of Art and, kicking and screaming, they brought in about 18 cars on display. There was a lot of animosity towards the idea but it turned out to be their biggest attendance ever. People were taken aback by viewing cars as art. A lot of the old-school people thought it was an awful idea but people really flocked to it.
It’s nice to see the automobile being appreciated as art. A Ferrari just went at auction for .4 million. That’s a crazy amount of money, but then a little Monet or painting that hangs on the wall goes for 0 million. Wouldn’t you rather have one you could use, and drive around?
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Tatra interested in Dutch army order; Phoenix to be imported in the UK; RHD models tested
Czechtrade.nl has written that the Czech ambassador in Holland Jaroslav Horak visited DAF Eindhoven on October 21. The visit was meant to underline the Czech-Dutch Tatra Phoenix cooperation. Further it became known that both Daf and Tatra will try to supply the Dutch army with 3500 5-ton trucks, once the present Dutch DAF trucks will be replaced in the near future. The 3500 trucks will be part of a new cargo system.
http://www.czechtrade.nl/nieuwtjes/bezoek-aan-daf-n-v-te-eindhoven-20528/
In a Commercial Motor article it has been announced that the Tatra Phoenix will be imported in the UK.
Commercial Motor tatra-phoenix-article.pdf
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Press, Tatra Works
Paccar’s CEO comments on DAF-Tatra deal
Question: Jerry Revich – Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division
And Mark, can you talk about your vision for the TATRA business specifically? Did you anticipate at some point owning a bigger piece of the company? I guess what’s the extent of the opportunity here?
Answer: Mark C. Pigott – CEO Paccar
Well, full points to you for asking that question. TATRA, of course, we’ve known TATRA for a long time. They’ve been around, well, for over a century. And right now, our focus with TATRA, and I just came back from Europe recently and drove an 8×8 TATRA through our most rigorous off-road course and it handles beautifully, is really to sell that product through our DAF dealer network in addition to TATRA’s own network. And I think you’ve seen a picture. There’s been a couple of articles in the commercial truck press. I know there’s a good one in Commercial Motor magazine in the U.K. in the last couple of weeks. So that’s going to be the focus. Initially, we’ll be in Europe. And it’s an adjunct product. This is not a mainstream product. It’s focused off highway. But there’s good demand for it. And then over time, we’ll take a look at other opportunities to use that product around the world. Initial focus is certainly in Europe.
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WikiLeaks: US embassy’s take on Czech corruption
A series of cables from the US embassy in Prague show ambassadors and top officials struggling to comprehend the size and scope of Czech corruption, according to dispatches leaked this week by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. Czech citizens were getting increasingly angry but did not seem prepared to kick out the tarnished politicians and parties, the sometimes prescient cables add.
Full story: http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/politics-policy/wikileaks-us-embassy%E2%80%99s-take-czech-corruption
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