Cars of Coolhaven

Months ago, frequent commenter Jan send me some pictures of this great old little open car. I never got around to posting them here on the site. Why? Well, let’s just say I would have had ‘No. 1 Procrastinator’ tattooed on my ass in very large and brightly coloured letters, if only I had gotten myself to the tattoo shop. Oh well, maybe tomorrow Soon enough, I kinda let the pictures get lost in my mailbox. Luckily for all viewers here, I have kicked myself in the short-and-curlies and finally; here they are, pics of this old Czech car, all thanks to Jan!

I do not know all that much about Tatra, which is a shame. Apparently, it is/was the third oldest car manufacturer ever. As all pioneer car builders the company started as a coach and carriage builder, but in 1897 (!) produced their first car. I have proudly named this car a model T11, but if I am mistaken, please correct me. All I have to go on is the wikipedia page and a very nice and elaborate page on Jan’s Dutch language car encyclopedia site.

Some facts, boldly taken from Wikipedia (great pages on Tatra!):

The Tatra T11 was the first Tatra model to use the unique combination of major components that is still in use on the trucks produced by Tatra to this day. This consisted of the engine and gearbox in unit, bolted to the front of a tubular backbone with propeller shaft enclosed, that also doubled as the chassis. Bolted to the rear of the backbone is a final drive unit that using an assembly of gears not only changes the direction and speed of the drive, but facilitate the movement of swing axles without the need for flexible drive joints. In the case of the T11, the engine was a fan cooled horizontally opposed twin cylinder engine with overhead valves. It had a capacity of 1055 cubic centimetres and was located above the front beam axle which was attached to it by a transverse elliptical spring. Hans Ledwinka created the design of the T11 while working for Steyr in Austria. he believed there was a need for a small car, and carried out the work in his own time. His offer of the design to the Steyr management was rejected. He left the company soon after to work for a previous employer, Nesseldorfer, in Moravia, soon to become Tatra. This was in 1921 and the development of the T11 started soon after. The T11 was produced between 1923 and 1927 with 3,847 examples made.