Talent factory
Of course we should write something about Röhr, founded in 1926 by Hans Gustav Röhr together with Hugo Greffenius. As early as 1927, the Röhr 8 came onto the market, a very advanced vehicle for the time, with two individually suspended wheels on transverse leaf springs at the front, and a swing axle with cantilever half-springs at the rear, powered initially by a 2-litre in-line eight-cylinder, and later by a 2.5-litre with likewise eight cylinders, but offset from each other by 10 degrees in a V-shape (a design that VW used again in the 1990s). In 1931, Röhr had to file for bankruptcy. With money from the Swiss importer Joos Andreas Heintz, Neue Röhr AG was founded, for which Ferdinand Porsche designed a completely new vehicle, but it continued to be called Röhr 8. From 1933, there was also the Röhr Junior, based on the Tatra 75, again with an advanced chassis, but this time with a 4-cylinder boxer engine. In 1934, however, it was finally over; Hans Gustav Röhr became chief designer at Adler in 1931, and later technical director at Daimler-Benz.
And that brings us right into the history of the Tatzelwurm. Karl-Wilhelm Ostwald, who was working as a trainee for Röhr at the time, probably found an unused chassis of a Tatra 75 at his employer’s in 1934. He was able to buy it cheaply – and put a body on it that he had designed and built himself. This was quite aerodynamic, at least in the area of the front end. At the back, the Tatzelwurm was a convertible, the roof could be opened up to the bumper. Because the home-made car weighed only about 900 kilos, it was sufficiently powered by the 30 hp of the 4-cylinder boxer engine from Tatra.
Karl-Wilhelm Ostwald and his family kept and drove the Tatzelwurm well into the 1970s. For Ostwald himself, this vehicle was his only attempt in the car industry; he was later one of the main people responsible for the construction of the German autobahns. And for us, the Tatzelwurm is a wonderful continuation of our series of the “extraordinary”. You can also find more exciting vehicles in our archive.
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