Tatra - The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka is the story of the Tatra company,
which originated in the Central European country of Czechoslovakia. It
is a tale of great innovation and avant-garde design in automobile
engineering. It is also the story of one man - Hans Ledwinka - and his
visionary concepts which have become highly influential, although often
undervalued, contributions to the development of car technology.
Until now, Hans Ledwinka's talent has hardly been recognised; in
retrospect, he can be judged equal to car designers such as Benz,
Daimler and Porsche, whose endeavours have been fully recorded many
times over. With his revolutionary Tatra cars Ledwinka consistently
pushed back the frontiers of automobile construction, and it's certain
that without his inspiration, the Volkswagen in its air-cooled
rear-engined form would perhaps never have been conceived. This book
suggests that Ledwinka played a greater part in this development than
has previously been appreciated.
The authors have covered the full history of the Tatra company, which is
one of the oldest factories in continuous automobile manufacture, dating
back to the 19th century. By doing this, they have placed both Ledwinka
and the Czechoslovak Tatra company in their rightful place in the
history of car design, and provided a fully comprehensive assessment of
the influence of Tatra car designs and their inspired creator.
The text of this larger format 2nd edition has been fully revised and
updated since the 1990 edition. This new edition also contains many
additional illustrations. The book also has a new foreword, written by
Norman Foster, the British architect, and proud owner of a Tatra T87,
who pays tribute to the aesthetic qualities of this design classic and
captures the fascination of both designers and motor historians with the
development of Tatra.
