Tatra had been founded to make wagons and carriages in Czechoslavakia in 1850 becoming Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft and changing its name to Koprivnická vozovka a.s in 1919. The 'Tatra' badge (after the Tatra Mountains) started to be used from 1919, and the first car had been produced in 1897. Hans Ledwinka was an innovative engineer who gave Tatra man revolutionary designs, including the air-cooled Tatra 11 of 1923, and the 6-cylinder water-cooled Tatra 17 of 1926. With Ledwinka, Tatra designed streamlined cars, such as the 1934 T87 with a rear-mounted air-cooled V8 engine, and this car laid the pattern for all future Tatras. Ledwinka met Porsche, brought together by Adolf Hitler, and there began a 'cross pollination' of ideas that resulted in the Volkswagen Beetle, although Tatra did succesfully sue Volkswagen for plagiarising the 4-cylinder Tatra T97 once the matter of the Nazis had been disposed of. During WW2 Tatra built military vehicles for the Germans, but also supplied the unique Tatra cars to German officers who liked their originality. After the War, Tatra were nationalised in Communist Czechoslavakia, and the new T600 Tatraplan was launched in 1948; this car evolved into the T603 in 1956, the T613 in 1974, and the final T700 in 1976.