Generally, I like to feature old photos and stories for Flashback Friday. Today I’ve got something different: a video.
About a month ago, I drove a Scion iQ down to the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tenn., to experience some of the world’s most unique vehicles (and see if the Scion iQ really is a unique, new design!)
I won’t spoil the fun, but while I was there I had a chance to drive an original Volkswagen Beetle, Fiat 500, MINI Cooper, and Citroen 2CV—along with a Tatra T700 and the world’s smallest car, the Peel P50.
Jeff Lane, the museum’s namesake, was a fantastic host; so were the experts who work at the museum. With more than 300 vehicles, it’s amazing just to see how much work goes into keeping them all running!
We shot a video, embedded below, about the museum and Jeff Lane himself. Try to name all of the cars featured…it may be impossible.
http://autos.sympatico.ca/waste-gate/13229/flashback-friday-a-trip-to-the-lane-motor-museum
Journalist Gordon Wilkins said 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 more dangerous 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 judge 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 had always nursed a passion for the innovative experiments of the 1930s with streamlined rear-engined cars. Burney, Stout, Tjaarda, Porsche, Fuller, Bel Geddes, Ledwinka, Übelacker 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. Read further at http://www.velocetoday.com/ludvigsen-on-the-tatra/ (This article originally appeared in the NOVEMBER 1, 2008 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car and on Tatra World April 5, 2010 http://www.tatraworld.nl/category/personal/page/3/
Apart from the Ludvigsen story, Veloce paid attention to the magnificent Greenstein T 87. http://www.velocetoday.com/tatra-t87-a-portfolio-by-don-hodgdon/
By Pete Vack with help from Karl Ludvigsen
Why a Tatra in VeloceToday, you might ask. Probably because it is a carmaker lost in the mountains of Moravia, lost almost to history, lost to VW, lost to the ravages of the 20th century and revolution, lost to the incessant demands of a system that requires both profit and excellence. A survivor, Tatra still exists and produces trucks, but the famous and advanced Tatra automobile is no more, one of the homeless but technically interesting cars we often welcome to the friendly shores of VeloceToday. We bring you this to serve as an introduction to our next two articles, one about the Tatra T87, and the other on the post war T600. We also thank Karl Ludvigsen for his help with researching this article.
Just simple subscribe for the three part Tatra article!
http://www.velocetoday.com/
(sent by Paul Greenstein)
Moodys has down graded KCB therefore CSOB due to debt repayment problems..
(Malcolm Douglas)
German long-time Tatra enthusiast Rolf Ackermann drove his T 57 Sport in last week’s German Schotten winterrally.
http://www.motor-klassik.de/termin/sport-42-asc-winterrallye-rund-um-schotten-4078352.html
Famous T 87 traveller Miroslav Zikmun wasd surprised at his 93th birthday when restoration firm Ecorra visited him at his kome with Jiri Pechan’s T 87. Zikmund was awarded with a Tatra model, calendars and other Tatra stuff. (Martin Prokop/Eva Plutova)
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.350988298267738.89879.138103669556203&type=1
Fred Jonckheere allowed to take some pictures and learn about his 3 Czechoslovakian Tatra cars
http://canadianrodder.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13039
