Nice motor, love the colour scheme. There was some talk about Audi bringing back the Horch name as Benz did with the Maybach. I don't think it happened.
Ted
Last edited by: Ted on Tue 5 Jun 12 at 22:47
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The colour of that mighty fine German automobile is Eggplant, a.k.a Aubergine = Ford Cortina 1600E :)
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What a car Dog very nice.A car for A.C.
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I thought AC drove a three wheeler
www.3wheelers.com/ac.html
:-)
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>> www.3wheelers.com/ac.html
That's an interesting website. I never realised that so many 3-wheelers ever existed.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Wed 6 Jun 12 at 13:24
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In actual factuals, I would bet my bottom Dollar that AC would choose this car, if he had Lud's sort of smackeroonies:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-DUIFJ8WOk&feature=relmfu
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I am flattered and, er, deeply moved by the nation's interest in what my choice of personal transport would be if I had as much money as this Lud fellow (could he be one of the fat thieving toerags in suits sideswiped by the excellent Rowan Williams in his Jubilee sermon?).
I agree the Horch is splendid, like the colossal Mercedeses on the Nazi era, but it isn't the sort of car for haring through London back-doubles or even lolloping round the Sussex lanes. It's just too big. Perro ic certainly right when he says I would like a Tatra, but the one I like is the 603, black and chrome like the ones used (more or less exclusively) by the Czech communist nomenklatura. I missed my chance of one of those at a bargain price by bottling out of having it smuggled into the West. Could so easily have become a nightmare and cost me a couple of grand I could ill afford, for nothing.
The only three-wheeler I would really consider would be one like SlidingPillar's. But I really prefer a wheel at each corner.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 6 Jun 12 at 14:13
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Are Tatra cars based on early Volkswagen cars I wonder (or vice versa) the engines were flat 4 'boxer' engines placed at the rear of said vehicle, even the dashboard on that Tatra on YouTube reminds me of a VeeDub.
(even sounds like one)
Or is that the way a lot of car manufactures generally did things in that part of the world back then?
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The Tatra looks like a cross between a Jowett Javelin and a Porsche 365...
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VW had to pay Tatra millions for nicking their ideas.
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Like Dr Ferdinand Porsche, the Tatra designer Hans Ledwinka was a Sudeten Czech.
Proper Tatras have an aircooled 2.5 litre V8 in the tail. Prewar they were snazzy quirky European cars but during the cold war there was a wish to make them as it were more American than American cars. Hence the superbly kitsch 603, nevertheless as a Czech car freak observed to me 'a very solid and well-made car'. Hardly surprising as they were more or less handmade for a small but highly threatening privileged minority.
The wheel, dashboard and column gearshift are clearly a pastiche of an American fifties cockpit. The four speed and reverse gear linkage goes down the steering column, then doubles back at an acute angle and goes all the way back to the gearbox in the rear transaxle. Of course the obvious, efficient, low-maintenance option would have been a floor shift. But no one wanted to be outdone by the Americans. 'Only a Czech would have designed a gear linkage like that,' the same Czech friend said with lugubrious satisfaction.
The 603 kooks absolutely fabulous in black, sounds great, goes well enough and has by accounts quite entertaining handling. But they are so rare.
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Link to Alexei Sayle's mention of his fondness for Tatra 603s in Telegraph Motoring
tinyurl.com/72w9v2r
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>> Alexei Sayle's mention of his fondness for Tatra 603s in Telegraph Motoring
I am on record as complaining about Alexei Sayle as a motoring writer. He's fine as a comedian and songbird but merely 'likes' cars. You can say as much about lots of people's girl friends.
He was jolly lucky to have communist parents and to have actually been chauffeured about in Tatras in Prague when he were a nipper. But he thinks wrongly that the Tatra's engine was 'massive'. Apart from having the good taste to like the things, he doesn't have anything to say about them. And when confronted with the last-of-the-line, admittedly ugly, but more powerful post-communist last gasp Tatra, instead of enjoying its wayward nature he just got scared stiff and wimped out. Pathetic I call it.
Tchah!
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>He's fine as a comedian and songbird but merely 'likes' cars.
I have to disagree AC.
He's a carp comedian and songbird as well.
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So AC would drive a Nazi army officer's staff car? What are you saying?
It is a neat car, although it would be a devil to park round where I live. You would need a special climate controlled storage facility too.
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>> So AC would drive a Nazi army officer's staff car? What are you saying?
>
Lots of people drive cars made by a company blessed by Hitler for producing a "people's car".
(Except of course they did not produce many )
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>> >> So AC would drive a Nazi army officer's staff car? What are you saying?
>>
>> >
>>
>> Lots of people drive cars made by a company blessed by Hitler for producing a
>> "people's car".
Indeed they do. But the Beetle was not an army officer's staff car. Mind you, it is a fantastic design, and it is a shame that there is no modern version. (No, I don't count the new Beetle, which is just a Golf, it is too much of a parody.)
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>>Golf, it is too much of a parody<<
Ah! - you've used that word again, I'm not edumacated like you lot see, so I have to look things up.
I thought it was a parable.
:-D
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This is the car AC might drive - Ted
