Tatra 87

The Tatra 87 has unique bodywork. Its streamlined shape was designed by Hans Ledwinka and Erich Übelacker and was based on the Tatra 77, the first car designed with aerodynamics in mind. Small sets of windows in the dividers between the passenger, luggage space, and engine compartments, plus louvres providing air for the air-cooled engine, allowed limited rear visibility. Its entire rear segment could be opened to service the engine. The front doors are rear-hinged coach doors, sometimes termed "suicide doors", while the rear doors are front-hinged. Many design elements of the Tatra 87, V570, and the later T97, were copied by later car manufacturers. Ferdinand Porsche was heavily influenced by the Tatra 87 and T97 and the flat-four-cylinder engine in his design of the Volkswagen Beetle, and was subsequently sued by Tatra. The price new (in the 1940s) was 25,000 SFr. A 1941 Tatra 87, owned and restored by Paul Greenstein and Dydia DeLyser of Los Angeles California, won a New York Times reader's poll of collector's cars in 2010, beating strong competition from 651 cars. ==Notable owners==

Streamlined Tatras • Tatra V570 1931, 1933 • Tatra 77 1933–1938 • Tatra 87 1936–1950 • Tatra 97 1936–1939 • Tatra 600 Tatraplan 1946–1952 • Tatra 603 1956–1975 • Hans Ledwinka – the Tatra designer (He received one as a gift from Felix Wankel after retiring. This car is now on display in the Deutsches Museum in Munich) • Eliška Junková – one of the greatest female drivers in Grand Prix motor racing history • Ernst Heinkel – German Nazi aircraft designer, whose company produced the world's first turbojet aircraft and jet plane, as well as the first rocket aircraft • Felix Wankel – German engineer, inventor of the Wankel engine • Emil František Burian – Czech poet, journalist, singer, actor, musician, composer, dramatic adviser, playwright, and director • Vítězslav Nezval – one of the most prolific avant-garde Czech writers in the first half of the twentieth century and a co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia • Erwin Rommel – German General and Field Marshal of World War II (used also Tatra's Czech competitor, Škoda Superb, in the field) • Andrey Yeryomenko – Soviet General and Field Marshal of World War II (received the first T87 manufactured after WW2 as a present, this car is now on display in the Tatra museum) • John Steinbeck – American writer • Farouk I of Egypt – the tenth ruler from the Muhammad Ali Dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and Sudan • Josef Beran – Czech Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop of Prague • Edvard Beneš – a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the second President of Czechoslovakia • Antonín Zápotocký, Klement Gottwald – communist leaders, presidents of Czechoslovakia after the 1948 coup d'état • Jay Leno – an American stand-up comedian and television host • Norman Foster – a British architect However, this alleged story has never been proven and is considered apocryphal, the order forbidding the T87 use being imposed only after several non-fatal accidents. == References ==