The Hungarian inventor who revolutionised car designs

Szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu presents us with the story of Pál Járay, who was decades ahead of his time, thus changing the car manufacturing scene forever.

The way cars look was ever changing in the first decades after the first vehicle appeared on the roads. The design we see today is the fruit of years’ of long work, but as they became easier on the eye, they also became more comfortable and, most importantly, safer.

Streamlined car-bodies played a crucial role in the progress of cars, yet not many know that a Hungarian man – whose revolutionary thinking changed everything car-related – invented this.

Pál Járay was born in 1889, in Vienna, to Hungarian-Jewish parents. He began his career as an airplane-developer, and during WWI, he was inspecting the hydrodynamics of zeppelins at Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. In 1920, Járay chartered the new zeppelin design: it had the smallest drag, it had a rounded front and tapered back. Thanks to him, the operational costs of zeppelins was reduced by almost half.

After this, he became interested in cars, achieving the same levels of greatness in car development as well. In 1921, he chartered a car design too: the streamlined automobile. According to his idea, the perfect car has a raked windscreen, the wheels are right below the car-body and the passenger compartment is drop shaped.