The Polish automotive industry was practically built from scratch only after the Second World War, and its backbone was mainly license-produced vehicles. For example, the famous Warszawa , produced by the FSO car company since 1951, was actually a GAZ M20 Poběda, and we probably don't need to talk much about the Polish Fiat either. The Poles valued the small rounded Syrena even more, one of the few truly domestic models. And it was even better at the end of the 1950s, when a small group of engineers almost secretly developed a small sports car, the Syrena Sport . However, the Communists could not come to terms with this car, and today you will only see it as a replica…
The construction of the only prototype, which was only supposed to be a kind of mobile laboratory of the automobile company, began in 1957 under the leadership of Cezara Nawrot and Stanisław Łukaszewicz, who, together with several other specialists, dedicated almost three years of their free time to it . When they presented the result of their work to the wider public on Labor Day, i.e. May 1, 1960, they probably did not expect such an avalanche of reactions, both negative and positive, of course. The two-seater coupe with a length of 3800 mm was and still is perhaps the most beautiful car of Polish production . The design is again signed by Cezary Nawrota, and as the young designer himself admitted, he was primarily inspired by several Ferrari or Mercedes 190SL models. However, the lines of the Chevrolet Corvette could also be found with closed eyes. Either way, the Syrena Sport got a long and low hood with a small intake opening, an interesting silver line on the front fender and a chrome rear bumper. The bodywork is then painted red in contrast to the black roof, what a difference compared to socialist Trabants, Wartburgs or Syrens in grey, grey-blue, grey-black or a very strange ivory.
The use of a laminate body on a self-supporting steel chassis with transverse hinges and leaf springs at the front and longitudinal hinges and torsion bars at the rear was very unusual in the then socialist bloc. Władysław Skoczyński and Andrzej Zatoń were put in charge of the development of the drive unit mainly because the engine from the classic Syrena was simply too big. The two mentioned constructors thus developed a completely new four-stroke two-cylinder boxer engine with air cooling. The engine block came from a two-cylinder boxer from the French Panhard Dyna, then it was supplemented with cylinders, pistons and heads from a Junak S-03 motorcycle, respectively a crankshaft and connecting rods of its own production. From the volume of 698 cm3, it was possible to extract 35 horses at 5000 rpm, which does not sound dazzling at all, but with a curb weight of 710 kg , it was still enough for a maximum speed of around 125 km/h. And above all, the little sports car was disproportionately more fun on the road, also thanks to the redesigned steering, hydraulic clutch and four-speed manual transmission driving the front wheels, than with any other car from Poland at the time, that is, actually the Polish People's Republic.
The unusually positive reception not only by the Polish people of that time, but also by the press, where speculation began about small-scale production (even two companies were found to manufacture the laminate bodywork), quite possibly surprised the leading figures of the state and the ruling communist party, which, moreover, were not at that time supporters of private car ownership. For example, the first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, Władysław Gomułka , once said that an ordinary person does not need a car, but a bicycle is enough for transportation. However, he himself of course drove an opulent Soviet-made limousine… Well, exactly these people called the Syrena Sport extravagant and imperialistic , and their recommendation was to withdraw the only manufactured prototype with about 29,000 kilometers traveled from the testing process and close it to the Research and Development Center of the car company nearby Warsaw. In the second half of the 1970s, due to the release of capacity, there was an order to liquidate not only the Syrena Sport , but also several other rare FSO prototypes. Of course, its creators tried to save the coupe, but in the end only partial documentation survived. Nowadays, there are only replicas on various chassis bases…
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Source: auta5p.eu, FSO, wikipedia,org, autogen.pl, carlustblog.com, smcars.net
