Tatra 603 at Josefuv Dul Car Show, Liberecky kraj, Bohemia(CZ), 2015

In spite of the famous Tatraplan of 1948-1952, Tatra didn't discontinue the old Tatra 87 until 1950, and from 1952 until 1956, they had no flagship model of car, concentrating their road vehicle production on trucks and trams. Tatra, as I've said in other postings, actually engaged in a number of industries beyond cars, and still survive today as a truck manufacturer.

This changed starting in 1953, when the Czechoslovak Communist Party decided to domestically produce a luxury car for their officials. The procurement of luxury cars for the Communist Party has a long history, and during the Cold War it usually involved importation of Mercedes for the elites, and in later years Saabs for some officials (see Gene Dietch's autobiography For the Love of Prague for the backstory on this). However, there were large, arguably American-style, luxury cars produced in Communist countries as well. The Tatra 603, with its tail fins and V-8 engine, may seem to be in this vein, but it actually doesn't resemble any American car if you dig deeper. After all, even the East German Trabant 601 had tailfins. The Soviet GAZ Chaika was a more direct copy of American design, being based on Packards of the same era.

By comparison, the Tatra 603 had a rear/rear layout, with an air-cooled HEMI V-8 of only 2.5L displacement. This engine was descended from the last engine used in the Tatra 87, albeit with a smaller displacement, HEMI heads, and a conventional pushrod valvetrain. The end result was that it produced only 104 horsepower. This is derisory for a V-8 engine until you consider it had only 2.5L displacement to work with, no supercharging, and no turbo. Turbocharging wouldn't debut in any production car until 1962, when this innovation was shared by the Chevy Corvair Spyder and the Oldsmobile F-85 Turbo Jetfire. Due to its small displacement, it would be far better to compare the 2.5L HEMI to a large 4-cylinder or smallish 6-cylinder, rather than a small-block HEMI V-8. Still, the exhaust note is very much a V-8 sound, and this specific Tatra 603 had dual exhausts.

I was unable to determine the model year of this specific car, but this three-headlight design was used in the 1956-1962 model years (this arrangement actually dated back to the Tatra 77 of 1933, and was also used on the Tatra 87, although not the Tatraplan). Some pre-1963 Tatra 603's were sent back to the factory to be given the later dual-headlight setup, to this means that the original unrebuilt three-headlight models are somewhat rare, in spite of overall Tatra 603 production for 1956-1974 exceeding 20,000 units.

Other features of the Tatra 603 included disc brakes from 1968 onward, along with seatbelts on all seats, making it arguably safer than American cars of the time, which still usually included them only in the front (seatbelts of any kind wouldn't become mandatory on American cars until 1968). The Tatra 603 also came with a 4-speed transmission as standard before they were standard in most cars. For comparison, the 1956 Chevy Corvette came with a standard 3-speed or an optional 2-speed auto, with the 4-speed only being an option starting in that year. Air conditioning wasn't an R.P.O. (in 1956, it wasn't common in any cars other than Cadillacs and such) but was sometimes fitted for certain buyers such as Fidel Castro.

The resulting performance doesn't sound impressive by modern standards, but for the time it was very respectable. The top speed was officially published as 170Km/h, which was faster than any (Eastern or Western) European economy car of the time, and faster (surprisingly, in my opinion) than some slower Cadillacs and other luxury cars. Actually, there were even some popular sports cars in 1956 that couldn't reach 170Km/h in stock trim, either, like the MGA, the Austin Healy 100-6, or even the Porsche 356.

In the modern-day Czech Republic, the Tatra 603 is now a desirable collector car, in spite of its Communist background. Many stories have been told, however, about how the use of the 603 by the Communist StB regularly blew their cover, as whenever an unmarked 603 appeared on the street, everybody presumed they were being staked out by the secret police. Weirdly, the regular "public safety" officers, or VB, drove marked Skodas, which means that they would have been stealthier than the StB had they simply used unmarked ones.