Hans Ledwinka

Hans Ledwinka was an Austrian automotive designer. He was born in Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria, near Vienna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He began as an ordinary mechanic before receiving an education in Vienna. From an early age he worked at the Nesselsdorf wagon works, later renamed Tatra, in Nesselsdorf. Initially involved in railway carriage design, he subsequently helped design the company's first cars. He developed the Type U with a 5.3-litre six-cylinder engine. In 1917, during the First World War, he joined Steyr.

Ledwinka soon returned to Tatra in Kopřivnice (Nesselsdorf), then in Czechoslovakia and now in the Czech Republic, serving as chief design engineer from 1921 to 1937. At Tatra he developed the backbone chassis with swing axles, fully independent suspension and a rear-mounted, air-cooled flat engine. Another major achievement was the streamlined body, which enabled Tatra to bring the first streamlined car to market and put it into mass production. Together with his son Erich, who became Tatra's chief designer, and Erich Übelacker, a German engineer also employed by Tatra, Ledwinka designed the streamlined Tatra T77, T77a, T87 and T97. All had rear-mounted, air-cooled engines.

Tatra cars attracted influential figures such as Hitler and Porsche. Hitler was a keen motoring enthusiast and used Tatras on political tours of Czechoslovakia. He also dined with Ledwinka several times. After one such meal, he told Porsche that Ledwinka's cars were the cars for his roads. Porsche, in turn, acknowledged that when designing Volkswagens he sometimes took an interest in Ledwinka's work, and Ledwinka sometimes took an interest in his. The Beetle bore a striking resemblance to an earlier Tatra model. Tatra sued Volkswagen for patent infringement, but Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia interrupted the proceedings. At the same time, Tatra was forced to stop producing the T97. The matter was reopened after the Second World War, and in 1961 Volkswagen paid Ringhoffer Tatra compensation of three million German marks.

After the Second World War, Ledwinka was accused of collaborating with the German occupation forces and imprisoned in Czechoslovakia for five years. Released in 1951, he declined to work for Tatra and moved to Munich, where he died in 1967. In 1992, after the fall of communism, the Czech authorities posthumously rehabilitated him. In 2007 he was inducted into the European Automotive Hall of Fame.

His son Erich was also an automotive designer. He developed the Haflinger, a light, multipurpose four-wheel-drive vehicle. In 1971 it was succeeded by the one-tonne Pinzgauer Typ 710, which retained its predecessor's backbone construction but featured a more powerful 2.5-litre, 87 hp petrol engine and a five-speed gearbox. Both vehicles use a tubular backbone frame with transmission shafts housed inside it and swing axles.