Tatra T87: The Air-Cooled, Rear-Engined, Dorsal-Finned V8 Streamliner From 1936

In the 1930s, most big luxury cars had a huge engine at the front, an upright radiator and the aerodynamics of a wardrobe. Then Czechoslovakia's Tatra went in a totally different direction, and the result still looks like a prop from a sci-fi film.

The Tatra T87 went on sale in 1936 and stayed in production until 1950, built at Tatra's works in Kopřivnice. Hans Ledwinka and Erich Übelacker designed it, building on the earlier Tatra T77 and the streamlining ideas of Paul Jaray, the aerodynamicist who had worked on Zeppelin airships.

Everything is in the wrong place (on purpose)

The engine is a roughly 2.9-litre, air-cooled, overhead-cam V8, and it sits behind the rear wheels. Air comes in through slatted scoops on the rear deck. With the engine at the back, the front could be low and smooth, and the tail could taper away like a raindrop.

Then there's the dorsal fin running down the spine of the rear deck, there to help stability at speed. Up front there are three headlights, the third one sitting in the middle of the nose like a cyclops eye.

Slippery numbers

When a T87 was tested in Volkswagen's wind tunnel in 1979, it recorded a drag coefficient of 0.36. That doesn't sound special today, but it was astonishing for a 1930s car. With only around 75–85 horsepower (sources vary), the T87 could reach close to 100 mph, while competitors needed far bigger engines to keep up.

The legend of the "Czech secret weapon"

Here's where the "glorious mistake" part comes in. A heavy engine hanging out past the rear axle, on swing-axle rear suspension, can make a car snap into oversteer if you lift off mid-corner. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II, high-ranking German officers took a shine to these fast, exotic sedans. Legend says enough of them crashed T87s that the car earned a reputation as a "secret weapon." It's a great story, but it's folklore, not documented history, so file it under "probably embellished."

It went everywhere

The T87 wasn't just a curiosity. Czech travellers Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund famously used one on a long expedition across Africa and Latin America in the late 1940s. Tatra built only about 3,000 T87s, and the surviving ones are treasured.

Why we love it

The T87 is what happens when engineers ignore the rulebook completely, with brilliant and occasionally terrifying results. The fin, the third headlight and the V8 in the boot all look mad on paper. Put them together and you get a car that was decades ahead of its time and is still one of the most distinctive shapes ever built.

Want to know what one actually costs? The Tatra T87 Quirk Database entry logs real auction sold prices, each linked to its result.