The 1930s saw some of the greatest cars ever built come to life. In the U.S., we had the Cadillac 16, the Buick Roadmaster, the Ford Model A, the Lincoln Model K, and the Chrysler Airflow. In Europe, BMW introduced the 328, while Mercedes-Benz rolled out the luxurious and sleek 500K.

Then there was the Tatra T87, an innovative car designed in Czechoslovakia that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Jay Leno says it's "the greatest car no one has ever heard of" and he's trying to fix that by featuring the T87 in a new episode of his famous video series.

It featured a rear-mounted, 2.9-liter, air-cooled V-8 engine with an overhead cam design and a hemi head and an extremely aerodynamic body for the era. Not only is it ranked among the fastest production cars of its time, but it was also notably more efficient. The T87 was known to return almost 20 mpg on a full tank, whereas competing cars rarely went past 12 mpg.

The Tatra T87 is also famous for having inspired Ferdinand Porsche to design the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. Tatra sued Volkswagen in 1938, but the lawsuit was stopped when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II. The matter was re-opened after the war and eventually settled out of court in 1965, when Volkswagen paid Tatra one million German Marks.

The "Nazi-killing" Tatra

The T87 was so fast for its time that many drivers had issues keeping it under control.

As Jay Leno jokes in the video, the Nazis probably lost more commanding officers to the T87 than to the Czechoslovakian army in the first days of the invasion.

The Tatra T87 has a few notable owners

Although it's not as iconic as other cars from the era, the T87 was owned and driven by quite a few important people. The list includes Ernst Heinkel, who produced the world's first turbojet aircraft, and Felix Wankel, the inventor of the rotary engine. German General Erwin Rommel and Soviet General Andrey Yeryomenko also had one, as did King Farouk I of Egypt. American writer John Steinbeck also owned one. Jay Leno purchased his T87 after being picked up from the airport in a Tatra that's on display at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.