Tatra (company)

About Tatra (company)

Tatra is a Czech vehicle manufacturer from Kopřivnice. Owned by the TATRA TRUCKS a.s. company, it is the third oldest company in the world producing motor vehicles with an unbroken history. The company was founded in 1850 as Ignatz Schustala & Cie. In 1890, it became a joint-stock company and was renamed the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft. In 1897, it produced the Präsident, which was the first factory-produced automobile with a petrol engine to be made in Central and Eastern Europe. The First Truck was made a year later, in 1898. In 1918, the company was renamed Kopřivnická vozovka a.s., and in 1919 it changed from the Nesselsdorfer marque to the Tatra badge, named after the nearby Tatra Mountains on the Czechoslovak-Polish border (now on the Polish-Slovak border). In the interwar period, Tatra came to international prominence with its line of affordable cars based on backbone tube chassis and air-cooled engines, starting with Tatra 11 (1923). The company also became the pioneer of automotive aerodynamics, starting with Tatra 77 (1934).