Photo of the day - Tatra!

[tbutler]

Early-model Tatra T-11 convertible at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville.

Tatra is a Czech company that started making cars under the Tatra name in the 1920s; this car is around that vintage. It was later known for streamlined, rear-engine air-cooled cars that arguably inspired the VW Beetle; after WW II, it became a primary luxury-car maker for the Communist elite across Eastern Europe, even ending up in Cuba. I'll post photos of some of the other models at the Lane Museum if there's interest. :) Some of them are pretty funky.

Edit: Another pic of the T-11. Does the smaller size work better for you in browser windows?

Comments

[yhlee]

I have a large enough monitor that the larger size is fine for me.

Eee, vintage cars! I don't know anything about cars any more, but I was car-crazy as a small child and had posters of them on my walls. :) In Richland, Washington every year they have a vintage car show and if you hang out at the park at the right time you can see this procession of various vintage cars drive by. It was great. I hope they still do that.

[tbutler]

That sounds nice! I had... a weird mix of stuff on my walls; parents were actually nice enough to get me a couple of framed bird prints (which I still have up in my current place!), some space-related mini-pics, but in a way my walls were too full of bookshelves to have much room for posters. But yeah, classic cars, aerospace and nature/landscapes have always been favorite subjects of mine.

You're in Baton Rouge, if I remember right? Do you ever make it north as far as Nashville? The Lane Motor Museum I mentioned is a really neat place to go, they have more than 400 cars in their collection with a lot of them being vintage. They focus heavily on non-US cars, so they have several MG's, Citroens, the Tatras, BMW's from the 30's through the 60's...

Another couple of neat auto museums I can recommend are the Indy Motor Speedway museum and the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, MI; although the Henry Ford has a LOT more than just cars. (Airplanes, including one from Byrd's 1926 polar expedition; locomotives; furniture, from an industrial design standpoint; industrial machinery, including an original Edison generator; historic exhibits, like the bus from the Rosa Parks Montgomery sit-in; and more.)

[yhlee]

Baton Rouge, yes, but I've only lived here for three and a half year. I've never been to Tennessee. If I ever get up to any of these places and have free time I'll try to remember to hit these, thanks!