THE
GATTER CAR AND
ITS CONSTRUCTOR
Gatter cars ran on the roads of Northern Bohemia in
the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925 Willibald Gatter (1896-1973) built
the model "SCHRECKENSTEIN", an elegant four-seater
with swing axes, praised by the press of those days as the perfect
model for an "European Car".
Between 1930 and 1936 the "KLEINE GATTER" ("small
Gatter") was built in several different models in the Bohemian
city of Reichstadt. Models 1930 and 31 were two-seaters, models
1932 and 33 three-seaters and eventually in 1934 a four seater was
built.
The KLEINE GATTER was built at a time when cars were still
a prerogative of the rich. Willibald Gatter wanted to change this
and thus built a small and inexpensive car, for no more than the
price of a motorcycle.
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Willibald Gustav Gatter (1896-1973)
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Prototype in around 1927 in Hühnerwasser, Northern Bohemia,
in front of the "Gatterhouse".
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The Gatter Car of 1929 in Aussig, Northern Bohemia. In the background
the Schreckenstein Castle who gave its name to this model.
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At first Willibald Gatter enjoyed a tremendous success. Since his car
was affordable also for the lower segments of society the press soon awarded
it the name of "Volksauto" or "Volkswagen", meaning
"Peoples Car". Adolf Hitler would use this term when he created
his "Volkswagen Corp." in 1937 that produced the VW-beatles
we all know so well.
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Gatter Car Model 1930
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Gatter Car "Model 1931"
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Despite being of German/Austrian descent, Willibald Gatter
did not built his cars in the then prospering "Third Reich",
but in his native Bohemia (then Czechoslowakia). When an economic crisis
hit Bohemia in the mid 1930s it was the low and middle classes that suffered
most. Willibald Gatter lost his now impoverished clientele and by 1936
had to close down his factory.
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Gatter Car advertisment of 1931 "Model 1932"
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Gatter Car advertisment of 1932 "Model 1933"
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After World War II (that had made Willibald Gatter and his family
refugees in Western Germany) Gatter intended a remake of his 1930s
success. In the early 1950s he again built an affordable small car.
But lack of investment capital as well as consumer preference for
huge American-style cars made this model never get beyond the prototype
stage.
Who knows, had he built this car in our days, he might have had
considerable success, since the taste went back to small, cheap
and low in consumption, as models like SMART or TWINGO
show.
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Today probably only one Gatter car is surviving. It is
still in the old home region of the Gatters, in Northern Bohemia. I found
it there in 1996. It was a bit like a tresure hunt to find a car that
my grandfather had constructed some 70 years back. Here is a photo taken
at an Oldtimer exhibition. It is a "Model 1932", as shown above
in the advert of 1931.
... and finally here a recent article on the Gatter Car
published in 1996 in the German magazine "Oldtimer Markt":
In the summer of 2004 I visited the Czech Republic with
my family again and we also met the Beran family, the owners of the last
Gatter car. They were so kind to take us for a ride in this beautiful
Oldtimer. Click on the link to see pictures of
this adventure. Below a picture of father and son Beran, at the wheel
of their Gatter Model 1932.
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