1. Skoda won their class in the RAC Rally for 17 years in a row using the 130LR Estelle, which was powered by a 130bhp, 1289cc engine.
2. The Skoda company began with two blokes, Laurin and Klement. Laurin wanted to begin a bike business because a German company was rude to him and wouldn’t fix his bike. They started making those, then motorbikes, then cars.
3.In the early ’80s you could specify the Sport package from a dealer for your Estelle or Rapid. It included a big carb and inlet manifold, tweaked head, uprated cam and tubular exhaust manifold – from a main dealer!
4. Back in the ’70s, Skoda had plenty of success racing the groovy looking 110R and 130R models. The cars are still campaigned by racers today, especially in Eastern Europe.
5. Bertone, the same styling house that designed the Lamborghini Miura and Countach also designed the Skoda Favorit – presumably in their lunch hour.
6. This awesome looking car is the Skoda Super Sport Type 724 from 1971. It was originally white, but was sprayed black for the filming of the 1981 film Ferat Vampire.
7. To raise their profile with the ‘yoof’ market, Skoda commissioned Awesome GTi to make a VR6-powered Felicia and it was an absolute monster.
8. The most expensive Skoda ever built was arguably a cake. The recent Fabia advert cost around £500,000 to put together!
9. In 2004, of the 3.7 million cars registered in the Czech Republic, 1.8 million were Skodas. So that’s nearly half!
10. Skoda have resurrected numerous model names, including Octavia, Felicia, Rapid (above) and Superb.
