Start with what the Tatra 600 is: a 4-door fastback saloon with 1952 , built from 1948 to 1952, in a decade split by war, when civilian production stopped and restarted. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Josef Chalupa / Vladimír Popelář / František Kardaus / Hans Ledwinka.
The background
The Tatra 600, named the Tatraplan, was a rear-engined large family car (D-segment in Europe) produced from 1948 to 1952 by the Czech manufacturer Tatra. The prototype was finished in 1946.
The engineering
The engine is 1952 . On the scales it comes to 1200 kg. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine hangs behind the rear axle, a layout that gives ferocious traction out of a corner and a reputation to match on the way in. The wheelbase is 2700 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
In the Tatra line-up the Tatra 600 has a clear place: it replaced the Tatra 97; it handed the line to the Tatra 603; the factory was Kopřivnice, Czechoslovakia. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Citroën 2CV, the Porsche 356, the Chevrolet Bel Air. Its Tatra stablemates include the Tatra 10 and the Tatra 600 kabriolet.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Tatra 600 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.
Tatra 600 kabriolet