The Tatra versus Volkswagen lawsuit

One of the great tales of Volkswagen lore is the lawsuit between the Czechoslovakian Tatra company and Volkswagen. The internet is filled with claims that Dr Porsche stole the VW concept from Hans Ledwinka; of a pre-war lawsuit by Tatra squashed by the Nazis; and the consignment of the 1938 Tatra T97 to oblivion to prevent its comparison with the Beetle. It makes for a great story and, like all great stories, it contains a kernel of truth, but is now encrusted in layers of myth and bullshit. So, what is the truth?


Porsche and Ledwinka photographed together in the late 1930s at Grand Prix meet. Porsche was the technical director of the Auto-Union 'Silver Arrows' racing team in the mid to late 30s.

Ferdinand Porsche and Hans Ledwinka were both born in the later years of the 19th century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both were native German speakers from German dominated regions: Ledwinka from Lower Austria and Porsche from Bohemia. Neither were formally qualified engineers, but rose to their positions thanks to their natural talents. Following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Great War, both adopted Czechoslovakian citizenship. This decision was economic as German-Austrian nationals found international travel and work opportunities severely curtailed in the 1920s. Doors were opened for men of talent like Ledwinka and Porsche however, and Porsche would find work in Germany and Austria, while Ledwinka would find opportunities in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Much is made of the fact that their paths crossed several times during their careers. Hans Ledwinka left Nesseldorfer in 1915 and joined the Austrian Steyr company as their technical director of motor car development. The cars he built for Steyr were practically identical to the heavy, prewar Nesseldorfers, but Ledwinka recognized that the times were changing and post-war there would be a market for a cheap, mass produced car. This bought him into conflict with the Steyr board, who saw no money in a cheap, budget car, so when Nesseldorfer - shortly to be renamed Tatra - offered him the technical directorship in 1921, he resigned from Steyr and moved to Czechoslovakia, taking his Steyr design team with him. 

Similarly, Porsche had risen through the ranks at Austro-Daimler to become managing director, but his plans to develop a budget car led to conflict with the Austro-Daimler board. He was forced to resign in 1923 and moved to German Daimler in Stuttgart, where he became technical director of their racing division, but he continued to agitate for a budget car project. In 1926 German Daimler and Benz merged to form Daimler-Benz. Porsche's ongoing conflict with Daimler-Benz management led him to resign in 1929 and take up a position at Steyr. His tenure at Steyr would be short as that company was almost immediately plunged into bankruptcy. Austro-Daimler stepped in and purchased the struggling company and Porsche was made redundant. His negative experiences with conservative company boards led him to strike out and establish his own consulting engineering company.

It is true that both men had filled the same position at Steyr, but there was eight years between their respective tenures. There was nothing that Porsche could have gleaned from Ledwinka's budget car proposals in the Steyr archives that he couldn't have seen with his own eyes on the road, as Ledwinka's revolutionary Tatra T11 had been on the road since 1924. In any case, Porsche had already expressed his own views about an 'auto fur der jedermann' (or car for the common man) since the early 1920s. There was nothing unique or special about the idea of a ‘people’s car’ at this time. 

Ledwinka's Tatra T11 proved to be a tough little car that bristled with innovative features, including a front-mounted twin-cylinder air-cooled engine which was directly mounted to a sturdy tube chassis, which doubled as the transmission tunnel, with drive delivered through independently sprung half axles to maximize traction. The Tatra T11 was a game changing car that inspired engineers across Europe.

One Hungarian-German engineer was particularly inspired by the Tatra T11, but felt he could do better. Josef Ganz believed further cost savings could be achieved if the engine was moved to the rear. There were simple engineering reasons for moving the engine to the rear. Placing the engine over the rear driving wheels would improve traction, and would reduce overall weight and minimize loss of power by dispensing with the drive shaft. Reduced weight and power loss meant a smaller engine could be employed, which in turn would reduce production and running costs. Ganz' ideas would be showcased in the Standard Superior, which was first unveiled in 1933. Ganz's design utilized Tatra's independently sprung half axles and tube chassis, and was powered by a 400cc two-cylinder two-stroke engine mounted ahead of the rear axle. The car drew the interest of the engineering community but it was a vehicle of limited practicality and sales of the little car were disappointing. Ganz' unattributed use of Tatra's patented central tube chassis and independently sprung half-axles would lead to long running lawsuit for patent infringement. https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2022/08/1933-standard-superior-road-test-das.html

This contemporary German cigarette card shows off the modern, streamlined lines of the improved second version of the of Standard Superior, promoted as the 'Deutschen Volkswagen." Calling it a 'Volkswagen' doesn't mean it is a Volkswagen.

Looking back towards the rear-mounted engine. The 400cc two-stroke engine was water cooled with a small radiator mounted behind an air scoop on the back deck.

Carl Borgward's contemporary Hansa 400 was similar in style and concept to Ganz' Standard Superior and yet no one claims Borgward as the progenitor of the Volkswagen.

The Hansa 400 design had its origin in Borgward's rear-engined three-wheeler, the Goliath Pioneer.  http://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/goliath-pionier.html The car's air-cooled two-stroke was mounted on a platform far in the rear. The engine was cooled by a small fan drawing air through vents in the rear and blowing across the air cooling fins on the cylinder heads.

Hans Ledwinka and his team felt that Ganz was onto something and embarked on his own rear-engined car project. Using a Tatra T12 as a basis, the twin-cylinder air-cooled engine was moved to the rear boot, driving the rear wheels through a differential. Performance was adequate but the potential cost savings from removing the drive shaft suggested that this could be a viable solution for a budget car.
The project was expanded, resulting in the V570 prototype, which was powered by a rear-mounted four-cylinder air-cooled boxer engine of approximately 1700cc and rudimentary streamlining. However, the development process of the V570 highlighted a significant technical challenge with the rear-engine placement - effective cooling. Lightweight wooden body cars like the Hansa 400, which used air-cooling were small and light enough to get by with a simple fan and air-vents. However, to power a modern, steel rear-engine car would require a much larger engine with efficient mechanical cooling. A lot of engineering would be required and this would ultimately make a rear-engine budget car an uneconomical venture. The V570 was mothballed and the project was reworked as a luxury limousine. For almost two years Ledwinka and the Tatra team worked on the engineering of air-cooling. In the end they would patent over a dozen forced air-cooling designs.

In 1934 Tatra unveiled their first 'official' rear-engine car – the magnificent Tatra 77. One of the car's enthusiastic fans was the new German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Ledwinka, like Porsche met with Hitler on several occasions to talk about cars and Hitler is reputed to have told Nazi Labour leader, Fritz Todt, “the Tatra is the car for my autobahns.”

In the meantime, back in Germany Ferdinand Porsche had been engaged by Hitler to work on his pet ‘people’s car’ project. Porsche had been convinced by the advantages of a rear-engined layout in a budget car since he had worked with Hans Nibel of Daimler-Benz on his Tropfenracer project (1928) and Mercedes-Benz H130 (1932).

The Benz rear-engine cars had suffered from handling issues that stemmed partly from the placement of their engines above their central tube chassis and their use of swing-axles. Porsche intended to use swing-axles in his car, but attempted to address the stability issues with the addition of torsion bar suspension as well as lowering the engine placement in-line with the tube chassis. Both Ledwinka and Porsche had addressed this particular design challenge in the same way. Both the Tatra and the KdFwagen placed the gearbox in front of the engine, which was mounted to the chassis via a U-shaped carrier. This was not a unique arrangement - even the Mercedes-Benz 130H used this arrangement (see photo above), but Tatra, having entered the market in 1934 had lodged Patent DE601577 relating to a vehicle chassis frame consisting of a longitudinal central beam and a fork-like extension connected to the central longitudinal beam by two transverse beams. Porsche had also used forced air-cooling, which was covered in other Tatra patents. Whether Porsche had looked at Tatra's designs or developed them independently isn’t clear or indeed relevant, because regardless how they arrived at it, Tatra were first in the market and held the patents. NB, Daimler-Benz' patent for the engine mounting of their rear-engine car, although also featuring a similar U-shaped carrier, was considered sufficiently different from Ledwinka's and Porsche's solution to be granted its own patent. This highlights just how much hair splitting occurred with automobile design patents.

Porsche’s Volkswagen took far longer to develop than expected and by the time that it was finally presented to the German public in 1938, Tatra had two rear-engined cars in the market – the luxurious T87 limousine and the smaller model T97.

The Tatra T97 was powered by a flat-four boxer engine like the Volkswagen, but that was pretty much where the two car’s similarity ended. For a start the Tatra’s engine was a substantial 1,761cc capacity, compared to the Volkswagen’s meagre 998ccs. The cars did not even look similar, except in the general sense that they were both streamlined and had rear-engines. The cars also targeted totally different markets – the Volkswagen was a cheap car for the working man, while the T97 was a car for the wealthy.

In 1938 Germany seized the Sudentenland and occupied the Tatrawerkes in Koprivince. The Nazis initially shut down the factory and forced its incorporation into the Reichwerkes Hermann Goering AG, a Nazi front company. The whole German auto industry was regulated under the Schell Plan. The Schnell Plan standardized vehicle designs and removed duplication of models to free up industrial capacity for war production. Tatra was bought under the Schnell Plan it was restricted to manufacturing only the T87 limousine, budget T57 car and T111 three-ton truck. Most of the factory was diverted to production of tank engines, half-tracks, trains and rolling stock for the war effort. Despite the myth, the T97 was not cancelled because ‘it was a competitor to the Volkswagen’ but because there was no room in the Schell Plan for two-rear engine limousines.

Germany's real interest in Tatra was their trucks. This photo taken in 1940 shows Hans Ledwinka and Tatra management escorting German officers on an inspection tour of the factory. The trucks are T27 3-tonners. Trucks like this served on all fronts during the war.

Nevertheless the Tatra 87 still provided a welcome distraction for some.

Post War
For the protagonists in this story, the war and its aftermath were filled with disappointment and tragedy. Dr Porsche was arrested and imprisoned by the French as a war criminal. He never faced trial however and was released in 1947. He then found himself frozen out of Volkswagen by the new managing director, Heinz Nordhoff, who regarded him with ill-disguised suspicion. Porsche visited the factory only once at the end of 1950, shortly before he died in January 1951. The company he had helped to establish made a rapid recovery and Volkswagen went on to become one of the most successful cars in the world.

Hans Ledwinka was arrested for collaboration with the Nazi’s by the postwar Czech government and sentenced to six years with hard labour. When he was released in 1951 he was offered the Tatra managing directorship, but this was politically impossible so he declined the honor and retired to Austria. He died in 1967. Tatra too recovered after the war, but remained a small volume producer whose products remained largely unknown outside of Eastern Europe.

The new nationalist government of Czechoslovakia nationalised all industrial concerns after the war, including the Ringhoffer-Tatra AG. All assets and facilities within Czechoslovakia were seized without compensation. Tatra's factory at Koprivince had been damaged during the war and had suffered some confiscations, but nothing so significant as to prevent the company restarting truck and some car manufacturing in 1947.

Hanus Ringhoffer, managing director of the Ringhoffer Group had died in Soviet captivity in 1946. His son's, Counts Anton and Hans Serenyi-Ringhoffer, had fled Czechoslovakia at the end of the war and were living in Switzerland and Austria. Neither Anton or Hans had been involved in the running of the Ringhoffer Group and worked in different industries. Of their father's vast industrial conglomerate, they were left a handful of businesses and properties in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, however, they were never able to make a going concern of what remained and the company fell into receivership in 1960. In 1961, as the reciever's lawyers were combing through the company documents that the idea of initiating a patent case against Volkswagen occurred. There was however a significant problem - all of the Tatra patents expired in 1961.

When the Czech government nationalised Ringhoffer-Tatra in 1945, they claimed ownership of all Tatra's patents, however, the patents were also registered in many jurisdictions outside Czechoslovakia. After the Czechoslovakian Communist Party seized power in 1948 and Czechoslovakia joined the communist block, western (capitalist) jurisdictions refused to enforce patents claims on behalf of the nationalised Tatra concern. In the mid-1950s, Anton and Hans Ringhoffer successfully sued for the recovery of the Ringhoffer patents in the courts in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, declaring the Czech authorities had no rights over patents outside Czechoslovakia. The Czechs conceded and reassigned the patents to the Ringhoffer's as they did not want to lose access to western markets. However, despite the recovery of the patents, Anton and Hans did not press for the enforcement of claims against Volkswagen or any other company.

Nevertheless, the recievers initiated a patent infringement case against Volkswagen based on three patents.
1. Patent DE601577 relating to a vehicle chassis frame consisting of a longitudinal central beam and a fork-like extension connected to the central longitudinal beam by two transverse beams, registered in 1934 in respect to the Tatra T77 engine mounting;
2. Patent DE636633 relating to the placement of the drive unit in motor vehicles using a central, e.g., tubular support frame, registered in 1937 in respect to revisions made to the engine mounting design in the Tatra T87 and T97, and a later patent;
3. Patent DE746715, registered in 1944 and covering the chassis frame and/or box frame.

The administrators sought to recover license fees and royalties from Volkswagen for every Beetle sold between the start of civilian production in 1946 and 1961, when the patents expired, amounting to some 6 million Deutschemarks. The Dusseldorf court was suspicious of the merits of the case and insisted the Ringhoffer's put 250,000 Deutschemarks against costs, something they struggled to do given the company's insolvency.

Hearings commenced in late 1961 and Ferdinand Porsche's son Ferry, daughter Louise Peich and Hans Ledwinka were all asked to provide testimony. If it were at all true that Ferdinand Porsche had stolen ideas from Hans Ledwinka and Tatra, Ledwinka needed only to say so on the record, but he did not. He acknowledged that this period was one of great fervent in the automotive field and all designers were keeping an eye on what their contemporaries were doing. The remark "he may have looked over my shoulder when I looked over his" cannot be an admission of plagiarism by Porsche because he was dead at the time of the lawsuit. The quote belongs instead to Hans Ledwinka, but as it doesn't have the same effect if it comes out of Ledwinka's mouth, partisans of the "Porsche stole his ideas" school of thought have falsely attributed it to the deceased Ferdinand Porsche. At any rate, all three testified to the friendly competitive relationship between Porsche and Ledwinka.

The Dusseldorf court examined the patents for the chassis and engine mountings against Volkswagen's designs and on 12 October 1961 determined "On all accounts, the action, as far as it is based on the contested patents DE746715 and DE601577, turns out to be unfounded." Patent DE636633, the earliest patent for the chassis design and engine mounting from 1934, was felt to have some merit, but was nevertheless 'stayed.' This effectively rejected the Ringhoffer's lawsuit. The case now moved from the courts of law to the courts of public opinion. Volkswagen stridently denied the Ringhoffer's claims, viewing their claim as little more than an attempt at extortion. The Ringhoffers' progressively walked back their claim from the initial 6 million DM to 1 million by 1964. Ledwinka and the Porsche children wrote often to Volkswagen managing director Heinrich Nordhoff recommending Volkswagen settle and bring the matter to a close as journalists working on behalf the Ringhoffer's lawyers were actively smearing both Porsche and Volkswagen in the press. 1 million DM was nothing to Volkswagen, but Nordhoff remained steadfast. In 1964, the case simply disappears from the record without resolution. There is no official record of Volkswagen paying the Ringhoffers' anything, except a handwritten note in the Volkswagen archives noting that the matter was settled. No amount is mentioned and we can only presume that Volkswagen settled for 1 million DM or less. Neither Hans Ledwinka nor Tatra in Czechoslovakia recieved anything from the settlement.

See Halgard Solte's research paper into the Ringhoffer vs Volkswagen patent dispute at Researchgate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338794765

Despite Volkswagen’s likely infringement of some technical aspects of Tatra patents, there is no substance to popular claims that Hans Ledwinka – or Jozef Ganz for that matter – should be credited as the true designer of the Volkswagen. In fact, there was nothing particularly unique in Porsche's, Ledwinka's and Ganz' designs. Rear engines, backbone chassis, and independent suspension had all been invented by others earlier. What each designer did however was bring these features together in new ways with various degrees of success. Ganz for instance popularized the idea of a rear-engined car, but his Standard Superior car was poorly designed, under powered and failed to sell. Ledwinka expanded Ganz’ idea into a modern, high performance supercar, while Porsche and his design team bought these ideas together in a new and innovative way to deliver the world beating people’s car.

Other links
VW History:http://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/volkswagen-world-beating-peoples-car.html
Tatra History: https://tatrat600.blogspot.com/2020/09/tatras-streamliners-yesterdays-car-of.html
Tatra Mythology (in detail):
https://tatrat600.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatras-self-licking-icecream-cone.html