Sam's description of the speed wobbles from the passing truck made my hair stand on end. Between 1947 and 1950, two Czech adventurers named Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zigmund drove their Tatra T87 all over Latin America and Africa, some 70,000 miles. When they returned, the iron curtain had fallen, and ordinary Czechs were no longer permitted to travel. The story of their trip was allowed to be published, and their radio programs and stories provided vicarious escape for tightly-controlled populace. Hanzelka and Zikmund would go on to be 20th century eastern europe's most popular authors. So, while the T87's penchant for dispatching high-ranking Nazis may be apocryphal, it really is a machine that represented freedom.
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