75 years ago, a Tatra T87 with an air-cooled V8 engine crossed Africa and South America without major breakdowns

How reliable could a car built 76 years ago be? How durable could a car be, without pretensions of being an offroader, that was made to cross 61,700 km through the relief of Africa and South America from 1947-1950, without many paved roads? And finally, how tough could a car with an air-cooled, rear-mounted V8 engine that was put through African and South American deserts in scorching temperatures be? Well, a Tatra T87 proved 75 years ago that it had exceptional reliability, perhaps among the best in the world at that time.

The expedition was organized by Jiri Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund, two young men who were not even 30 years old at the time. After the Second World War, in a new world where peace had finally come, they wanted to explore the world and at the same time bring back the appreciation for Czechoslovak cars. They went to the Tatra people to propose the idea of ​​this expedition.

Photo: Jiri Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund

They weren't too enthusiastic at first, as they were just recovering from the war period. They had just put the T87 back into production, a model with formidable engineering, but it was a model launched in 1936. However, its engineering was downright brilliant, starting with the aerodynamic shapes, and continuing with the entire lower part covered with a flat surface, for minimal aerodynamic drag, or with the centralized system of lubrication, which Mercedes introduced only in 1951. Suspension, independent, impeccable road holding, a 2,969 cubic cm V8 engine with hemispherical cylinder heads, applied only later by the American Hemi engines - all were part from the engineering of this Tatra. The car had 75 hp, could easily reach 160 km/h and had an average consumption of only 12.5 liters/100 km, while other models with similar performance at the time consumed 20-22 liters/100 km.

Photo: Tatra T87 air-cooled V8 engine

Finally, Tatra thought that the expedition might give them a nice image, reminding the world of the brand's fascinating engineering, until new models were developed, so they decided to finance it.

Hanzelka and Zikmund, two friends and former university colleagues, set about the brave planning of the expedition. They wanted to travel around the world, but not the shortest way, but the most difficult, to put the car to the test. Thus, they planned to go through Africa, then South America, then Korea, then China, part of Central Asia and the USSR, returning through Poland to Czechoslovakia. The de facto route, however, was different, dictated by the changing realities of those times.

On April 22, 1947, Hanzelka and Zikmund climbed into the Tatra T87, parked in front of the National Technical Museum in Prague. The two had taken their photo and video cameras with them, microphones, paper and pens for correspondence journals and notes. The Czechoslovak radio had contracted them to send weekly reports about the progress of the expedition and about the experience in the countries visited. At that time, Czechoslovakia did not have television, so radio and newspapers were the only media, and the show with the stories of the two became the most popular on the radio. But Hanzelka and Zikmund could not record long audio voices, so they sent texts by mail, which were later read by the editors in the radio studio.

Before starting, the two went through a training course from the Tatra engineers, who explained in detail all the construction of the car, in case they had to repair something on the way, where they would not have help. They took so much equipment with them that the information of the time says that all the luggage on board, together with the people, would have weighed up to one ton, about 50% more than the recommended load for the Tatra T87. But the two were convinced that the car would last.

The first road segment was short, passing through Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Monaco and all the way to the port of Marseille. From there, the car was put on a ship and went by sea to Casablanca, Morocco.

Photo: The loading of the Tatra in the port of Marseille

Africa was ruthless from the start, and the conditions were not easy at all. The route of the two Czechoslovaks involved many novel aspects, done for the first time in the world in the history of motorized travel. For example, this expedition was the first to cross North Africa from west to east, at a time when the borders between Morocco and Algeria were open, they were later closed and remain impossible to cross by land until today.

Algeria had been characterized by the two as a land scorched by the sun, even though they had not gone very deep into the Sahara. Tunisia was even more uncivilized by the desert roads, so they felt for the first time what the heat of Africa meant in the desert and the depleted resources of water, especially since they had oriented themselves to a water mill, included on the map, where they hoped to they discover an oasis with running water, but they find the mill dry at that time of year.

Tunisia followed and then Libya, and in Libya, while advancing through the desert, they suffered an accident when their car, driven at high speed, lost traction and hit a ditch with stones. The car could no longer move and its repair could no longer be done under expedition conditions. So the two called the factory and consulted with those from Koprivnice what to do next. Since all of Czechoslovakia was already following their expedition, the factory decided to send them a new car, from those that had been produced for sale, and to register it also with the number plate P19720, with which to continue the expedition.

Photo: Tatra T87, damaged in Libya

The two went with another transport to Egypt, waiting for the new car to arrive in the port of Alexandria. Only from there were they able to go further with Tatra, visiting the pyramids with her.

A difficult journey through Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and then both Somalias, controlled by the British and Italians, followed. Difficult, because here, through Sudan, the first crossing of the Nubian desert with a car took place. Hanzelka and Zikmund wrote in their memoirs that the problem was sand, which sometimes reached the air intake area for engine cooling, being stopped by the filter, but sometimes accumulating in larger quantities and having to be cleaned. The two, however, say that despite the heat, the air-cooled engine never overheated, even in the desert, as they wheeled through the sandy terrain.

Kenya followed, then Tanzania, where the two drove the Tatra T87 to the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. From there they went to Uganda, Kongo, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, to finally arrive in South Africa, in Cape Town. The car often had to go where there were simply no roads. And he had done it boldly, even if it wasn't an offroader!

From South Africa, the Tatra T87 was loaded onto a ship, which delivered it to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was already 1948, towards the end, when the car arrived in South America, and from there the two initially went to Paraguay and Brazil. When they left Brazil for Uruguay it was already the beginning of 1949.

Photo: Tatra T87 in Johannesburg, South Africa

The conditions in South America were different, but not necessarily easier. The two encountered the rainy season, which meant that their car was put to the test with difficulty to advance on unpaved roads. It was partly helped by the fact that the engine was located on the rear axle, which was much heavier, and thus there was more downforce.

However, small cleaning jobs, replacement of brake pads or other routine work and small repairs had to be done, so the engineering briefing from the factory, before starting, had caught them well.

Photo: Works at Tatra, done in Costa Rica

The two continued to advance and had passed through Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and then all the countries of Central America on their way to Mexico. It was already 1950 on the calendar and, according to the original plan, they should have entered the USA, then embark the Tatra on a ship and cross the Pacific to Korea. But in the meantime, the war had started in Korea, which later led to the separation between North and South Korea. Against this background, even the USA did not issue a visa to the two. So they had to end the expedition in 1950, going across the Atlantic to Europe and driving the car from Poland to Czechoslovakia back. The expedition had come to an end, after 61,700 km traveled by the two Tatras together, but most of it belonged to this Tatra T87, which the two arrived home with. In total, if the distance on water, and the one made with other vehicles such as those in Libya and Egypt, after the accident were taken into account, the expedition totaled 111,000 km.

During this time, the car had no serious breakdowns, no overheating of the air-cooled engine and no serious problems. In the meantime, however, Czechoslovakia had also changed from how they had left it in 1947. There had been a coup d'etat in 1948, supported by the USSR, which had installed a communist government in their country, a fact by which the two, accustomed to free spirit, they were not too pleased. Fortunately, their stories continued to be broadcast on the radio, because they were not considered political, and in an isolated country in the Eastern Bloc, these stories had become a breath of fresh air for many Czechoslovaks, showing them the big, free world and they told about unique experiences, inaccessible to ordinary people.

The people from Tatra decided to leave the expedition car to the two adventurers, but before that, they took it to the factory to inspect it, the process being filmed in a documentary. The engine was "opened" as well, in order to estimate what wear there is from the possible sand that got inside and, to everyone's amazement, the cylinders had no trace of abrasive materials on them. The engine was in impeccable condition, simply put.

So the two continued to make shorter trips with the same Tatra in the next 10 years, visiting countless other countries with it. Today the car is at the National Technical Museum in the Czech Republic and is on display for visitors to admire.

The two returned from the expedition with 11 kilometers of film and over 10,000 photos, which are today an invaluable archive item. The filmed images were found in documentary films, the photographs - in magazines and archives, and in addition the two published a series of books, which proved to be extremely popular in the Eastern bloc, selling over 6 million copies.

And, by the way, to dispel any assumption about the impartiality of the praise brought by the two for the Tatra T87 from their expedition, we will say that later, between 1959 and 1964 the two made another expedition with two Tatra 805 trucks through Asia and Australia. And the two trucks, still prototypes, were reported as constantly being broken, the two having to repair them almost every day. So the car made in 1947 was many times more reliable in difficult conditions than the trucks made in 1959.

We will publish another article about that expedition. Meanwhile, both Czechoslovaks were honored throughout their lives by their countrymen. Jiri Hanzelka died in 2003, at the age of 82, and Miroslav Zikmund passed away much more recently, in December 2021, at the age of 101. The materials collected by the two show not only the history of the Tatra but of the entire world through which they traveled, printed and described as it was at that time.

Photo: Miroslav Zikmund, image from 2017, in the Tatra T87 on display in the museum, with which he traveled between 1947-1950