Rounded at the front and pointed at the back, that’s the Tatra 77a. According to experts, this is the first aerodynamic mass-produced car in the world. Only a few pieces of the unique First Republic vehicle have survived. One is owned by the National Technical Museum, which had it restored with the help of a European grant. The car is a national cultural monument and people can see it at the museum’s branch in Plasy in the Pilsen Region.
“This car, 5 meters long and 30 centimeters long, started the tradition of large representative Tatra aerodynamic cars. The engine had a volume of 3.4 liters, the bodywork was absolutely unique in its time. The maximum speed is stated to be 150 kilometers per hour and consumption was between 15 and 18 liters. The steering wheel can be found on the right, as is common for First Republic cars,” explains Jiří Hulák from the National Technical Museum.
This exclusive Tatra model cost 100,000 crowns in its time, the prices of expensive cars were de facto equal to the price of family houses. The customers of such cars were mostly the army, the headquarters of various enterprises and the like.
The piece, which is exhibited in the museum in Plasy, was purchased in August 1937 by Evžen Porák, the owner of a large paper mill in Loučovice in Šumava. The car functioned as a service car and in 1974, in an impoverished state, it became part of the collections of the National Technical Museum.
He waited fifty years for his restoration. Then Aleš Hyner and his colleagues took over. “When we got the car, it was a wreck, and among other things, it had the central reflector removed, which was so unique about it. We returned everything, if possible, to its original state,” he concludes.
