Start with what the Tatra V570 is: a car with 854 , built from 1931 to 1933, when streamlining and independent suspension were arriving together. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Erich Ledwinka, Erich Übelacker, Hans Ledwinka, Paul Jaray.
How it came about
The Tatra V570 was a prototype 1931-33 car developed by a team led by Hans Ledwinka, Erich Ledwinka and Erich Übelacker. The aim of the construction team was to develop a cheap people's car with an aerodynamic body. The first T57-V570 prototype with rear air-cooled two-cylinder engine placed in the former rear luggage compartment of conventional T57 two-seater dropped head coupe was completed late in 1931. However, the company's management decided that the revolutionary ideas introduced in the prototype should be introduced in large luxurious cars, and therefore the team abandoned the project of small cars in favour of the Tatra T77, the world's first serially produced aerodynamic car.
The project of a small car was later continued and led to introduction of the Tatra T97. The second, now streamlined V570 four-seater was built in 1933, two years before the first Volkswagen, which bears a strong resemblance to the Tatra – it was misappropriated in the opinion of Tatra, by Adolf Hitler and Dr. Ferdinand Porsche in circumstances about which the German company remains intensely sensitive. In fact, Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi had sketched a design for a streamlined economy car with a rear-mounted boxer engine as early as 1924, nearly a decade earlier than both Tatra and Porsche, although it hadn't been published until 1934. Unlike the Tatra claim, Volkswagen has recognized Barényi as the "intellectual father" of the Volkswagen Beetle since 1955, after a legal battle spurred by statements in an official Porsche history book that Barényi considered slanderous.
The hardware
The engine is 854 . 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 2320 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Tatra line-up the Tatra V570 has a clear place: it handed the line to the Tatra T97; the factory was Kopřivnice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Bugatti Type 57, the Chevrolet Suburban, the Horch 670. Its Tatra stablemates include the Tatra 10 and the Tatra 600 kabriolet.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Tatra V570 — 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.