Ignaz Schustala (1822–91)
Ignaz Schustala (Czech: Ignác Šustala) began a small business making horse-drawn buggies and carriages in the mid-19th century at Kopřivnice (now in the eastern Czech Republic). His workshops expanded into a factory and then diversified in the 1880s to become an important builder of railway wagons as Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft. After Schustala’s death the factory became a pioneering maker of motor vehicles. In 1919 the brand was named Tatra after the nearby mountains.
Kopřivnice (Nesseldorf in German) was a village in the Austrian empire when Schustala was born there in 1822. He was orphaned at the age of 11. After elementary school he took apprenticeships as a saddle-maker and then as a wheelwright. He then worked for seven years for leading carriage builders in Vienna. When he returned to Kopřivnice his older brother found him a small farm building where he began making a range of buggies and carriages in 1850. This was such a success that the two sons of the Kopřivnice ceramics factory owner Ignác Raška helped him expand his business with a steam-powered factory in 1853. The vehicles were of high quality. The company exported carriages, omnibuses and post vans across the Austro-Hungarian empire. Schustala started branches as far apart as Vienna, Berlin, Wrocław, Prague and Kiev. By 1880, he had produced some 1,200 carriages.
When the railway arrived in Kopřivnice in 1882, Schustala was ready to contract to build rolling stock in a shed erected over a siding and he fulfilled his first order for freight wagons in the same year. In the next year he built 120 flat railway cars. The railway engineer Hugo Fischer von Röslerstamm joined the company to lead this development. Schustala needed additional capital for the purchase of materials and the addition of new production sheds and in 1890 the firm was transformed into a joint-stock company, Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft (NW). Schustala died suddenly. By the time that NW produced its first internal combustion engine car in 1897, his sons had sold their shares and left the business.
