The Whys & Wherefores of the Remarkable Type 87 Tatra

Among the world’s most exotic and mysterious motor cars, the big Tatras of the 1930s attract rumor and controversy. Karl Ludvigsen explains the background and his personal experiences of a Type 87.

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.