Tatra V570

The Tatra V570 was a prototype 1931-33 car developed by a team led by Hans Ledwinka, Erich Ledwinka and Erich Übelacker. The aim of the construction team was to develop a cheap people's car with an aerodynamic body. The first T57-V570 prototype with rear air-cooled two-cylinder engine placed in the former rear luggage compartment of conventional T57 two-seater dropped head coupe was completed late in 1931. However, the company's management decided that the revolutionary ideas introduced in the prototype should be introduced in large luxurious cars, and therefore the team abandoned the project of small cars in favour of the Tatra T77, the world's first serially produced aerodynamic car. The project of a small car was later continued and led to introduction of the Tatra T97. The second, now streamlined V570 four-seater was built in 1933, two years before the first Volkswagen, which bears a strong resemblance to the Tatra – it was misappropriated in the opinion of Tatra, by Adolf Hitler and Dr. Ferdinand Porsche in circumstances about which the German company remains intensely sensitive.^: 70

In fact, Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi had sketched a design for a streamlined economy car with a rear-mounted boxer engine as early as 1924, nearly a decade earlier than both Tatra and Porsche, although it hadn't been published until 1934. Unlike the Tatra claim, Volkswagen has recognized Barényi as the "intellectual father" of the Volkswagen Beetle since 1955, after a legal battle spurred by statements in an official Porsche history book that Barényi considered slanderous.