Austro-Tatras

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Austro-Tatras

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legal form
founding July 1936
resolution 1980
Seat Vienna , Austria
management Count Hans Serényi-Ringhoffer
Number of employees up to 500
Branch Automobile manufacturer

Austro-Tatra was an Austrian motor vehicle manufacturer which, like the Czech Tatra Group, had its roots in the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft .

prehistory

The breakup of Austria-Hungary created state borders between the production plant in Nesselsdorf and the headquarters in Vienna. For this reason the company management was relocated to Prague in 1919 and renamed to Ringhoffer-Tatra AG . The vehicles were also sold under the new name Tatra .

In order to be able to sell the vehicles produced in Nesselsdorf in Austria, they had to be imported. In addition, an own service network was necessary. Ringhoffer-Tatra AG built a central workshop in Simmering on the site of today's shopping center (the corner of Simmeringer Hauptstrasse-Grillstrasse and Lorystrasse was shared by Austro Tatra Werke and the foundry Vogelsängen & Pastree). At first only service work was carried out in this. Since the import duty was calculated according to the imported weight, bodies manufactured from Nesselsdorf in Vienna were mounted on the chassis from 1924.

The Tatra 11 sold successfully in Austria . Also the later models like Tatra 12 and Tatra 57 . However, the protective tariff increased steadily due to the political situation in Austria, so that, for example, a Type 57 brought about a sales price of 11,000 Schillings in 1935 with a hammer price of 4,500 schillings . Despite the high prices, the Tatra models took second place in the registration statistics of the same year.

construction

Austro-Tatra 57 A
Austro-Tatra 57 L, a delivery van based on the 57 A

However, in order to be able to sell cheaper, there had been considerations a few years beforehand to set up a complete production facility in Austria. In July 1936 a new company was founded, with all properties being bought from the Czech parent company. The majority of the company was owned by Austria.

In 1936 the bankruptcy assets of the Grofri company in Atzgersdorf near the southern railway were bought and the area in Simmeringer Hauptstrasse was enlarged. Step by step, production for the vehicles intended for Austria was relocated to Vienna. From April 1937, almost all of the vehicles were produced here. This enabled the sales price to be reduced by the duty share, which was around 40 percent.

The Tatra 57 A was manufactured in Vienna as a sedan and convertible. In contrast to the main plant, a truck variant was also manufactured in Vienna.

In 1937, the Tatra 57A was second in terms of registrations. Command vehicles were also to be built for the armed forces, but these became obsolete after the invasion of 1938. By then, around 300 vehicles had been completely completed in Vienna. The vehicle was advertised with the note “100% Austrian product” . At this time Steyr-Daimler-Puch , Gloria and Austro-Tatra were the only motor vehicle manufacturers in Austria.

War years

After the connection , production had to be forcibly stopped. Parts of the factory premises and the facilities had to be rented to the Austrian Saurer works . The other part continued to trade as Austro-Tatra, but had to carry out repair work on vehicles that had been damaged by the war and thus became an armaments factory, which turned out to be a disadvantage for the company at the end of the war.

At the end of the war, the factory management fled from the Soviet occupation. No support could be expected from the main plant in Czechoslovakia, as Baron Ringhoffer was expropriated as the owner and was taken to the NKVD camp in Mühlberg an der Elbe , where he died in late 1946.

post war period

Austro-Tatra came under public administration. This led to differences with the management of the now Czech Tatra np plant , as the Republic of Austria was anxious to protect the rights of Ringhoffer's heirs. Austro-Tatra only manufactured spare parts for the Tatra Mountains. The body shop also worked for other customers. For example, the Porsche plant manufactured the aluminum body for the sports cars that were produced in Gmünd in Carinthia.

Due to the already successful cooperation, Austro Tatra was awarded the contract in 1949 to convert 203 VW Beetles to open 4-door emergency vehicles and 9 Beetles to open 2-door emergency vehicles. The delivery period was limited to March 1951. The Vienna police received 150 of these beetles. 53 beetles were intended for the gendarmerie. The deal was handled by Porsche Konstruktionen GmbH & Co in Salzburg. According to Ing.Herbert Kaes, nephew of Ferdinand Porsche and then head of the customer service department at Porsche, the last Austro Tatra Police Beetles were delivered in 1953.

Negotiations about the construction of entire vehicles with Renault were unsuccessful. An assembly contract was negotiated with the German vehicle manufacturer Gutbrod .

In 1948 there was a final break and Austro-Tatra also lost the general agency for the Tatra vehicles, which the Škoda general importer Tarbuk took over with immediate effect.

In 1963, the company name was changed to Ringhoffer GmbH , as Austro-Tatra took over representations for other vehicle manufacturers such as Peugeot , Alfa Romeo and Rover under the management of Count Hans Serényi-Ringhoffer (1928–1993), the great-nephew and adopted son of Baron Hans Ringhoffer .

In 1980 the company, which employed up to 500 people, was finally closed.

In 2005, an exhibition about the former vehicle manufacturer was put together on the former site in the Simmering center. The garden furniture manufacturer Karasek is now on the company premises in Atzgersdorf .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Simmering: Opening of the exhibition "Austro Tatra", accessed on March 2, 2009
  2. ↑ From the beginning of the global economic crisis in 1929 to the outbreak of the Second World War 6.2.2.5 Smaller European producing countries
  3. ↑ Austria's newest small car prevails. In:  Innsbrucker Nachrichten , February 17, 1938, p. 15 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / ibn
  4. ↑ Thomas Braun: Durchgeboxt - The large encyclopedia of small series and self-made on VW Beetle and bus basis; also many Porsche examples . Schneider Media, 2018, ISBN 978-3-667-11444-0 .
  5. ↑ Austro-Tatra Made in Simmering (PDF; 529 kB) accessed on March 2, 2009

Web links

Commons : Austro-Tatra vehicles  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 10 '  N , 16 ° 25'  E