Production Years: 1934-1938
Country: Czechoslovakia
Number Produced: 249

The Tatra 77 is generally considered to be the first production aerodynamically-designed automobile. The people responsible for this were Paul Jaray, the Zeppelin aerodynamic engineer with knowledge and access to Zeppelin manufacturer JZ’s wind tunnel, and Hans Ledwinka, who was able to take that knowledge and incorporate it into an advanced luxury sedan’s design. Moving away from Tatra’s trademark tubular chassis, the T77 was coach built on a platform chassis with a pressed box-section steel backbone. The 60 horsepower rear-mounted 2.97-litre V8 engine is air-cooled and later models had a 75 horsepower 3.4-litre engine. Advanced features for a 1934 vehicle include overhead valves, hemispherical combustion chambers, dry sump, fully independent suspension, rear swing axles and extensive use of lightweight magnesium alloy for the engine, transmission, suspension and body. With modest horsepower in a large sedan, the drag coefficients of 0.2455 for the T77 and 0.212 for the Tatra 77A allowed a top speed of over 150 km/h (93 mph).

Learn more about the Tatra 77 on Wikipedia