Prague Archives • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

The Koprivnice factory, producing cars from 1919 under the new Tatra marque, was first and foremost a producer of railway wagons until the early 1920s. It produced only a few dozen cars each year. There was a change in 1923, when a new car plant was set up in Koprivnice and a small car, the Tatra 11, was put on the market. With its unusual design with an air-cooled engine, steel tube forming a backbone frame and with rear swing half-axles, this car ensured its producer a place in world automobile history textbooks and became the basis for the design solution of the great majority of other types of passenger and also utility Tatra vehicles.
The first owner of the car on display was Ellá Sternbergová from the chateau of Jemniste.

In December 1893, the textile magnate from Liberec, Baron Theodor von Liebieg, imported a Benz Viktoria automobile into Bohemia, the first motor car used in the Czech Lands and the third in the whole of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After short trips around Liberec, Liebieg made one of the first long-distance journeys in the world history od motoring with this vehicle in July 1894. He drove from Libere to Gondorf near Koblenz, the journey took six days and Liebieg reached an average speed of 13.6 km/h over a total of 939 kilometres. On his journey he kept a detailed diary, and so among other things we also know today that during the journey he encountered no other motor car on the roads. Liebieg’s Benz Viktoria, the first automobile driven in the Czech Lands, has been part of the National Technical Museum collection since 1946.
Passenger car with a water-cooled four-stroke single-cylinder engine placed cross-wise above the rear axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 3005 cc, output 6 bhp, maximum speed 30 km/h. Producer: Benz& Co., Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik, Mannheim, Germany

The Czech Republic is one of about ten countries in the world which can be regarded as the cradle of motoring. Motor cars have been produced in this country continuously since the end of the 19th century. Production of the first of these was started in 1897 by a railway wagon plant, Nessels• dorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesselschaft A.G., in Koprivnice in North Moravia, known later as the Tatra car plant. The car was given the name Präsident and immediately after its completion was driven from Koprivnice to Vienna on 21 and 22 May 1898 to an exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the rule of Emperor Franz Josef I. Also exhibited there was a car from the Vienna firm of Jacob Lohner & Co., with which the Koprivnice car plant shares primacy in the launching of factory production of cars in the monarchy. The NW Präsident car, the first car made in the Czech Lands, has been in the National Technical Museum collection since 1919.
Passenger car with a water-cooled four-stroke horizontally opposed twin-cylinder engine placed cross-wise above the rear axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 2714 cc, output 6 bhp, maximum speed 21 km/h. Producer: Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gessel-schaft A. G., Kopfivnice, Moravia

During the first half of the zoth century, three large car plants were operating on Czech territory, in addition to many smaller producers. These took it in turns to occupy the leading position on the domestic market. In addition to the plants in Koprivnice and Mladá Boleslav, there was Praga in Prague, founded in 1907. The big domestic car plants always tried right up to the Second World War to cover all segments of the market in their production programme.
So the Prague car plant had already in 1913 offered its customers, in addition to several types of utility vehicles, three types of passenger cars with four-cylinder engines – the small Praga Alfa, the two-litre Praga Mignon and a big luxury four-litre car, the Praga Grand. This Praga Alfa from the first year of production was donated to the National Technical Museum collection in 1946 by its producer.
Passenger car with a water-cooled four-stroke four-cylinder SV engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 1130 Cc, output 15 bhp, maximum speed 55 km/h. Producer: Pruni ceskomoravská továrna na stroje v Praze, automobilní oddelení Praga, Prague, Bohemia

In early 1914, an automobile was also purchased by the owner of Orlík Castle, Prince Karel Schwarzenberg V. The chassis was supplied by the Benz car plant in Mannheim and the body was built by one of the most renowned domestic coachbuilders, the Pilsen firm of Brozik. It was a beautiful and powerful car, but the young Prince did not enjoy it for long. He became one of the first victims of the World War, which ended with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the creation of Czechoslovakia. Immediately after mobilization, he was called up and took his car with him; he died of dysentery in 1914 on the Serbian front. After his death, the car was kept at Orlik out of reverence until the Communist takeover, when all the family’s property was confiscated and the car handed to the National Technical Museum collection. After 1990, his grandson, Karel Schwarzenberg VIl, despite his indisputable right to its restitution, left the car in the museum’s possession.
Passenger car with a water-cooled four-stroke four-cylinder SV engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 3969 cc, output 40 bhp, maximum speed 80 km/h. Producer: Benz & Cie., Rheinische Automobil und Motoren Fabrik A. G., Mannheim, Germany (chassis) and Carrosserie V. Brozik Syn, Pilsen, Bohemia (body)

In early 1914, an automobile was also purchased by the owner of Orlík Castle, Prince Karel Schwarzenberg V. The chassis was supplied by the Benz car plant in Mannheim and the body was built by one of the most renowned domestic coachbuilders, the Pilsen firm of Brozik. It was a beautiful and powerful car, but the young Prince did not enjoy it for long. He became one of the first victims of the World War, which ended with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the creation of Czechoslovakia. Immediately after mobilization, he was called up and took his car with him; he died of dysentery in 1914 on the Serbian front. After his death, the car was kept at Orlik out of reverence until the Communist takeover, when all the family’s property was confiscated and the car handed to the National Technical Museum collection. After 1990, his grandson, Karel Schwarzenberg VIl, despite his indisputable right to its restitution, left the car in the museum’s possession.
Passenger car with a water-cooled four-stroke four-cylinder SV engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 3969 cc, output 40 bhp, maximum speed 80 km/h. Producer: Benz & Cie., Rheinische Automobil und Motoren Fabrik A. G., Mannheim, Germany (chassis) and Carrosserie V. Brozik Syn, Pilsen, Bohemia (body)

The great majority of Tatra cars produced after 1923 had air-cooled engines. In the period between the wars, big luxury cars driven by a water-cooled six-cylinder engine were an exception among Tatra passenger cars. The most prestigious car of the make and one of the most expensive products in domestic automobile history – the six-litre twelve-cylinder Tatra 80 — was added to them in 1932. During the 19305, only 26 of these cars were produced in Kopfivnice and all had individual bodies made according to the customer’s wishes. The historically most renowned of these is preserved in the National Technical Museum collection. With a landaulet body, it was supplied in 1935 for the first President of the Czechosiovak Republic, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk.
Passenger car with a water cooled four-stroke vee twelve-cylinder SV engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 5990 cc, output 120 bhip. maximum speed 140 km/h. Producer: Zavody Tatra, a.s.. KopFivnice, Czechoslovakin

When German troops occupied the Czech Lands in March 1939, where we had up to then driven on the left, automobiles began to drive on the right. This was a trivial change compared to the following half-century of two dictatorships. The highest domestic representative of the first of these was the German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank, who from the end of 1942 travelled in a supercharged eight-cylinder Mercedes Benz 540 K. His car was produced in 1939 as a cabriolet, but after the successful assassination of the third most powerful man in Nazi Germany, Reinhard Heydrich, carried out in Prague in May 1942, it received a new bullet-proof saloon body. Frank was executed in 1946 for his war crimes, his car is preserved in the National Technical Museum collection.
Passenger car with a supercharged water-cooled four-stroke eight-cylinder engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 5402 Cc, output 180 bhp, maximum speed 160 km/h. Producer: Daimler-Benz A. G., Stuttgart, Germany

There is one car in the National Technical Museum collection the transformation of which symbolizes the country’s fate. It is the most luxurious and most expensive car of the Daimler-
-Benz pre-war production – the supercharged eight-cylinder Mercedes Benz 770. This cabriolet from 1939, which was originally commissioned for the commander of the German troops in occupied Norway, was used in Czechoslovakia after the war for the most important state cere-monies. In 1948, the Communists took over all power in the country and in a few years began to adopt an ideological attitude to automobiles too. The state cabriolet was for this reason given a completely new body in the Vysoké Mýto Body Works in 1952. On the outside, there was nothing that would remind anyone of its imperialistic origin – the car took on a new form, and for that matter the dictatorship did too.
Passenger car with a supercharged water-cooled four-stroke eight-cylinder OHV engine placed length-wise behind the front axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 7655 Cc, output 230 bhp, maximum speed 170 km/h. Producer: Daimler-Benz A. G., Stuttgart, Germany (chassis) and Karosa, n. p., Vysoké Mýto, Czechoslovakia (body)

A free market economy did not return to Czechoslovakia after 1945. The country’s economy began to be managed on a planned basis by government officials, who had already decided shortly after the war to reduce the number of types of passenger car produced to three – under the Aero name a small twin-cylinder Minor was to be produced, the Mladá Boleslav car plant was to produce a smaller passenger car based on the Skoda Popular pre-war type and the Koprivnice plant its aerodynamic eight-cylinder one. Probably the most famous car produced in this country in the second half of the 194s is the Tatra 87 with which the travellers Jiri Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund travelled round Africa and South America from 1947 to 1950. They wrote several books about their journey, shot a number of films and their more than 700 reports were the most listened to programme on Czech radio at the time. In 1959, Jiri Hanzelka donated this car to the National Technical Museum collection.
Passenger car with an air-cooled four-stroke vee eight-cylinder OHC engine placed length-wise behind the rear axle and with rear-wheel drive. Engine capacity 2968 cc, output 75 bhp, maximum speed 160 km/h. Producer: Tatra, n. p., Koprivnice, Czechoslovakia

Horse-drawn manually-operated fire engine, 1795/1820
For a long time there was a lack of equipment for fighting fires that would meet the two basic requirements – to be of significantly greater efficiency in fighting fires and to be quickly transportable to the site of a fire. A more serious fire could not be put out by straw or canvas buckets and primitive hand sprinklers, and so in the past fires that broke out as a result of small acts of carelessness often even destroyed whole towns. It was as late as the 18th century that the first horse-drawn mobile fire engines fitted with a piston pump appeared in the Czech Lands, which were operated by a number of men pumping manually by means of a balance beam. These had a tank, to which water had to be brought in buckets and splashed on the fire by means of a firmly attached rotating metal branchpipe or by leather delivery hose. Horse-drawn manually-operated fire engines were produced up to the early 20th century and actively served for a further half-century in many smaller communities.
Twin-axle horse-drawn manually-operated fire engine with a filling tank and a twin-cylinder piston pump. Producer: unknown, dated 1795; this fire engine was later fitted with a new pump cast in 1820 by the firm of Carl Bellmann in Prague

Since 1964 only speedway machines have been produced in Jawa Divisov.
This specialization has paid off handsomely, and speedway Jawas are the world’s best even today. A sport only for the brave is races on an ice speedway, where motorcycles without brakes but with dozens of sharp spikes on the wheels race round an ice rink. In this tough sport riders from the Soviet Union have dominated for years. In 1974, a Czech, Milan Spinka, beat them and became world champion on the machine on display.

In the 1920s, motorcycles of nearly all world makes were sold in Czechoslovakia.
Sometimes only a few were sold, in other cases several thousand. One of the machines which met with success here, and also for a while worldwide, was the Ner-A-Car scooter. The vehicle was easy to control and also designed for less experienced riders who did not want to get dirty on a journey. It was possible to ride on the scooter in normal clothing and even in a skirt.

On 15 March 1939, the German army occupied what was left of our country crippled by the Munich agreement. A substantial part of the occupying troops consisted of motorcycle units equipped with mainly BMW machines with a sidecar. After the war the German army left a large number of these motorcycles in our country. Reliable and durable BMW machines were then in service here for many decades.

Though motorcycles of almost all world makes could be purchased in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s, only a small number of the most powerful makes remained on the market in the 1930s. Also most of the smaller domestic producers had to close their gates. One of the exceptions was the idiosyncratic motorcycles Cechie – Böhmerland made by Albin Liebisch. Their success was due to their total difference from other motorcycles. The cheapest machine was the popular model on display with a two-stroke engine.

As part of its secret development Zbrojovka Ing. F. Janecek also provided an opportunity for creators of various interesting projects. One of these was the pilot Jan Anderle, who with this company’s support constructed during the German occupation a number of vehicles named Dalnik. These were two-wheeled vehicles with a bonnet, which were to provide the comfort of a car with the running costs of a motorcycle. But Anderle’s ideas did not come to fruition at that time. It was not until many years later that a Swiss car maker took up Anderle’s ideas successfully and produced a ranger – Ecomobile.

The firm of Laurin & Klement began as only a small workshop, but soon afterwards it developed into one of the most renowned European motorcycle pro-ducers. Its machines under the brand name Slávia were the peak of technical progress at the beginning of the 20th century. A total of four thousand of these motorcycles were produced, which were sold throughout Europe. In addition, a range of other firms produced these Czech motorcycles under licence. It was donated by Václav Klement.

Pace motorcycle for cycle races, around 1910
In the past, cycle races following motorized pacers were a very popular sport..
The pace motorcycle rider, sitting in upright position, parted the air and so enabled the cyclist riding closely behind to reach speeds of up 100 km/h for a lengthy period. Pace motorcycles were individually built machines.
The one on display is a typical representative with a massive four-stroke engine, which does not even have a gearbox or suspension. It was donated by Augustin Vondrich from Prague.

To be a motorcyclist at the beginning of the 2oth century was not easy; the motorcycle was an unreliable machine with a number of unpleasant caprices, which frightened horses – still at that time the most widespread means of transport. One of the pioneers of motorcycling was the priest Jan Svec from Dolany near Klatovy, who saddled the machine on display, the most powerful model under the Walter name fitted with chain gear and a clutch on the rear wheel. He donated this motorcycle to the National Technical Museum.