Everything about Hans Ledwinka totally explained
Hans Ledwinka born in
Klosterneuburg (
Lower Austria),
14th February 1878, died in
Munich (
Germany},
2nd March 1967; was an
Austrian born Czechoslovak
automobile designer, known for his innovation regarding both - technology and aesthetics.
Youth
Born in in the vicinity of Vienna in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ledwinka started his career as simple mechanic. Only later he studied in Vienna. As a young man he was working for
Nesselsdorfer-Wagenbau in Nesselsdorf, the company later known as
Tatra in
Moravia, where at first he was employed at the construction of the railroad cars, to be later involved in the production of the first cars produced by this firm. He designed for them the 5.3-litre six-cylinder
Type U motor car. In
1917, in the midst of
World War I, he left the company to join
Steyr.
Chief designer at Tatra
Between
1921 and
1937, Hans Ledwinka was the chief design engineer again at the
Tatra company (originally Nesselsdorfer-Wagenbau) in Kopřivnice (Nesselsdorf), then in
Czechoslovakia, now in
Czech Republic. Here, Ledwinka invented the frameless central tubular chassis (so-called "backbone chassis") with
swing axles, fully
independent suspension and
rear-mounted air-cooled flat engine.
Other major contribution of Ledwinka to automobile design is the development of car body streamlining and its introduction into mass production. Together with his son Erich, who took over the chief designer position at Tatra, Ledwinka designed the Tatra streamlined models Tatra 77, 87,
97, all with rear air-cooled engines.
Volkswagen controversy
Ledwinka's concepts were copied by
Ferdinand Porsche, who knew Ledwinka personally and exchanged with him ideas. Tatra sued Volkswagen about the breaches of the similarities in the Volkswagen design which has been virtually copying
Tatra T97. The lawsuit vanished as the Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Hitler ordered the production of
Tatra T97 to be halted. Only 500 cars were produced.
Porsche's successors later had to acknowledge the influence of Ledwinka's Tatra models on the Porsche-designed Kdf-Wagen of 1938 (later known as the
VW Beetle), and a new post-war lawsuit resulted in a DM3,000,000 settlement paid by
Volkswagen to Ringhoffer-Tatra.
Final years
After the Second World War, Ledwinka was unjustly accused of collaboration with the German occupation forces and jailed for five years in Czechoslovakia by the
Soviet installed
Stalinist government. After his release in 1951 he refused to work for
Tatra company and retired to live in Munich, Germany where he died in 1967. In 1992, after the fall of
Communism, Hans Ledwinka was posthumously fully rehabilitated by the Czech authorities.
The legacy
In 2007 Hans Ledwinka was inducted in the European Automotive Hall of Fame.
Ledwinka's son
Erich, is also a car designer. He created for the
Steyr-Daimler-Puch the unique
Haflinger, continued by the larger
Pinzgauer High Mobility All-Terrain Vehicle, both on tubular chassis and swing portal axle.
Further Information
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