Classic shrine: National Technical Museum

By Charlie Calderwood

| 4 Feb 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Classic shrine: National Technical Museum

You might expect the contents of a museum to reflect the character and history of the country in which it has been established, but even the very institution of Prague’s National Technical Museum has had to morph and adapt to the volatile 20th-century history of the present-day Czech Republic.

The consistent thread through the museum’s main collection building, however, is one of an oft-overlooked hotbed of engineering – including plenty of weird and wonderful cars.

The main hall of architect Milan Babuška’s purpose-built Modernist building – for which the ground was broken while Czechoslovakia was an independent country, only to be completed under the Nazi Protectorate – houses the centrepiece of the museum: its transport collection.

This Tatra T815 Puma is a three-time Dakar Rally winner

Even for a car enthusiast, you can’t help but first notice the two enormous steam locomotives as you walk into the room.

Both the ‘Hrboun’ and the ‘Kladno’ date from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the latter is still hooked up to the opulent private carriage of Emperor Franz Joseph I.

Nestling between those two giant trains is a motorsport legend that is barely any smaller: Karel Loprais’ Tatra T815 Puma.

This is the lorry in which the Dakar Rally legend won the Truck category in 1998, 1999 and 2001, and the museum labels it the most successful single Czech vehicle in motorsport history.

The Z-5 Express was built for just two years before Z’s Brno factory switched to arms production

It achieved half of the Kopřivnice-based marque’s six wins on the Dakar; Loprais was at the wheel for all of them, making him the third most successful driver in the event’s history.

More reasonably sized Tatras are also to be found in the hall, including the V12 coachbuilt ’35 Tatra 80 of Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Masaryk; a 1927 Tatra 11; and the firm’s famous streamlined pioneer, a 1937 Tatra 77a.

With the Tatra Technical Museum hosting a comprehensive collection of vehicles in the marque’s hometown in the east of the country, however, the museum here focuses on Czech brands that are lesser known to a foreign audience.

Examples include Brno-based Z, represented by a Z-4 and Z-5 Express, both from 1935, and the Praguer aeroplane company Aero, with a two-stroke 1939 50hp on display.

The Jawa 750 was built when the study of aerodynamics was in its infancy

Most striking is the 1935 Jawa 750, the sole survivor of six sports cars produced by the Prague-based company better known for its motorcycles.

Based on the front-wheel-drive Jawa 700, itself a licence-built DKW F2, the car is another early adopter of aerodynamics, and it made the most of its 745cc, 26bhp air-cooled twin-cylinder engine to win the 1935 1000 Miles of Czechoslovakia road race.

Jawa was just one of nearly 100 car makers operating in the country in the inter-war years, eight of which were successful enough to produce in excess of 1000 vehicles.

Walter, another aero-engine builder from Prague, also built luxurious cars from 1913-1937, represented here by a 1931 Walter Standard 6, a two-tone drophead coupé of a conventional engineering layout powered by a 2.8-litre straight-six engine.

The Wikov 7/28 Sport was the first Czech car to classify in a Grand Prix

When German forces occupied the country in March 1939, the local car manufacturers that hadn’t already switched over to arms production were then forced to do so, spelling the end for many domestic marques.

One that did survive was Praga, and – fittingly, given it is named after the city itself – its cars make up the single biggest group in the collection, following a recent donation of 15 Pragas from a local enthusiast.

A 1927 Mignon 6 hearse and 1947 Lady ambulance showcase the models’ adaptability to various roles in the city, while the 4-litre 1937 Golden limousine and one-of-a-kind 1938 Lady roadster further demonstrate the quality of luxury offerings from pre-war Czechoslovakia’s automotive industry.

This Mercedes-Benz W154 is Rudolf Caracciola’s 1939 Nürburgring Grand Prix winner

Cars from other countries feature in the museum, too, including the ’31 Bugatti Type 51 piloted by Czech ace Zdeněk Pohl to a first victory by a domestic driver at the Masaryk Grand Prix, and Rudolf Caracciola’s 1938 Mercedes-Benz W154, which remains in remarkably original condition.

The latter was discovered in Czechoslovakia by racer Antonín Vitvar as the dusts of WW2 settled, and was scooped up as a spoil of war.

Alongside the two foreign racing cars on a raised platform is the 1900 NW 12hp ‘Rennzweier’, the first Czech car built to go racing, along with the 1929 Wikov 7/28 Sport that was the first domestic car to be classified in a Grand Prix when it finished in sixth place at Masaryk in 1932.

Laurin & Klement became Škoda in the 1920s

Meanwhile, Czech pioneers, including a 1906 Laurin & Klement from the Škoda ancestor’s first year of automobile production, sit alongside early foreign imports, such as a 1912 Bédélia BD2 cyclecar and the 1893 Benz Victoria that is believed to be the first car driven in the Czech Lands.

The Benz is one of a number in the collection, although some have darker histories.

Karl Frank, a senior Nazi in the German Protectorate, had his 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet rebodied as a saloon with armour plating following the May 1942 assassination of Reich’s Protector Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, and it sits, perhaps with deliberate irony, by the tail of a 1945 Supermarine Spitfire flown by a member of the RAF’s Czechoslovak squadron.

This 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770 was rebodied in 1952 at the behest of Czechoslovakia’s Communist government

Opposite rests a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770 cabriolet, although not as anyone would immediately recognise it.

This car was built for a German commander in Norway, but made its way to Czechoslovakia by the end of WW2 and was adopted by the post-war state as a car for official ceremonies.

Its appearance became increasingly problematic, especially after the Communist takeover of 1948, and in 1952 the Benz was given natively designed coachwork in a transatlantic style by the Vysoké Mýto body works.

Like that Mercedes, the museum itself was also reconstituted as the Communist regime took hold, and it was then nationalised and renamed in 1951.

The Czechoslovak Squadron Spitfire LF MkIXE spreads its wings among the cars of the collection’s ground floor

The collection shifts noticeably from the varied consumer products of the pre-war economy to the military-industrial innovations of a Communist state as the artefacts become newer.

No private motor cars from the period are currently on display, although on the main hall’s mezzanine a torpedo-shaped 1961 Čezeta 502 171cc scooter stands next to a rough chronology of Jawa motorcycles that stretches to the late 20th century.

The mezzanine level is where you can also observe the collection’s aircraft, such as the Bat’a Corporation’s speed-record plane (the firm is better known for its shoes), the 1937 Zlín Z-XII and the cute 1947 Sokol M-1C, a small leisure aircraft developed in secret under Nazi rule and briefly made for export before the Communist Party took over.

The Čezeta 501 is powered by an 8bhp, 171cc engine

Czechoslovakia’s sole entry in helicopter history, the HC-2 Heli Baby, is represented by a prototype of what would go on to be a run of 21 production units.

Powered by an 84bhp motor and with a small chain in place of side doors, the tiny helicopter had understandably limited military use.

With democracy came a rebirth of public support for the museum, which had been starved of funds and forced to share its own premises with other institutions for years.

After more than a decade’s work, the building was restored in 2013 and returned to Babuška’s original design.

The HC-2 Heli Baby employs an air-cooled Praga engine

Leading off from the foyer and in the upper levels are modern, well-produced permanent exhibitions on photography, telecommunications, chemistry, time-keeping, architecture, metallurgy and astronomy.

In addition, two temporary exhibition halls house changing attractions; currently on display is the work of Czechoslovakia’s most famous wartime photographer, Ladislav Sitenský, who followed Czechoslovak airmen to Britain in 1939, before returning to the country to document its liberation.

The National Technical Museum is much like London’s Science Museum in its scope, but with the Czech Republic not having a single national motor museum that covers all marques, its transport collection is far larger and more stuffed with cars than the familiar South Kensington institution.

The NW 12hp was built for the 1900 Salzburg-Vienna race

While the excellent Škoda and Tatra museums elsewhere in the country tell the story of those most famous marques, nowhere else is the full breadth of the Czech automobile industry displayed so comprehensively.

That makes it a real treasure trove for the weary car enthusiast who walks through most museums finding everything too familiar – everyone but a Czech automotive historian will come across cars they have never seen before here.

With perhaps only 50 cars on display at any one time (more are in storage and rotated), it would be hard to justify a trip across Europe to the museum if you are not also interested in the planes, trains and motorcycles – but you really don’t have to.

The museum building looks out across the Vltava river at one of Europe’s most popular city-break destinations in Prague, and it is just a 20-minute ride by tram from the historic city centre ruled by stag and hen parties, and couples on romantic getaways.

Images: Charlie Calderwood