Only a very few of the today’s car companies can trace their beginnings all the way back to the nascent years of the automobile. Those few that began in the late 19th century include Peugeot, Opel, Mercedes-Benz, and Tatra.
Another is Skoda. They've celebrated the rare achievement of seeing their 125th anniversary, and an equally incredible 120 years in motorsport.
The Czech Republic’s perennial underdogs invited Robb Pritchard to their museum in the provincial town of Mlada Boleslav, about an hour north of Prague, to see some of their cars from the last twelve decades, from their earliest bike to the world's first all-electric rally car...
In a sleepy, back water Bohemian town, back in what were to be the final years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Václav Laurin and his lifelong friend Václav Klement sold bicycles, but with the advent of petrol-powered mechanization, soon abandoned pedal power to progress to the exciting new world of motorcycles. Imbued with a healthy dose of the innate human condition for competition, they entered their earliest creations in some of Europe's biggest events. One of the first stories to recall, and the moment the 120 years is counted from, is the 1901 Paris to Berlin race… where they won so quickly that the German timing marshals hadn’t even set up the finish line.
Two wheels didn’t satisfy them for long though and in 1905 they began making cars, branded L&K and soon became the biggest car manufacturer in the Austro-Hungarian empire. L&K again chose the crucible of motorsport to prove their cars and competed against the best manufacturers in the world of the time, such as setting a speed record at Brooklands in 1908 with an L&K Type FCS, which clocked a heady 73.76 mph. For five years in a row L&Ks won the notoriously tough Alpine Run (Alpenfahrt) a 3000 km long race all around the Austrian Alps. Unlike the smaller, often giant-killing cars that came later, the early L&K cars were proper beasts with 5 litre engines that raced against the best manufacturers of the day.
In the economic difficulties of the interwar period, when the half century long alliance between Austria and Hungary collapsed and broke up into a patchwork of independent states, the pair struggled. To survive, they had to merge with the bigger Skoda. But far from being the end of L&W, after rebranding to the ‘winged arrow’ they went from strength to strength.
They continued to compete with their modestly modified road cars, not just in Europe but with victories in countries as far and wide as Russia and Argentina. Often focusing now more on class wins for smaller capacity cars, rather than outright wins, here began their legend for beating competition in much more powerful cars.
The life-long friends both passed away in the ‘30s, but their company continued, despite the continent wide devastation of World War II, and the Communists seizing control. With all sorts of political obstacles in the way of enterprise and innovation, ultimately the whole bloc was put decades behind the West in technological advancement. The market in central and eastern Europe was still strong though, and Skoda’s rugged and affordable cars sold well, but their standard was far below those of the west. Still, with the skills and materials that were available, more often than not when Skodas turned up at big events, they surprised the opposition. Ordinary cars doing extraordinary things.
A couple of noteworthy results in these lean years was a trio of 1100s taking the top three spots in class at the 1948 Spa 24 Hours. In 1950 they were leading their class at no less an event than Le Mans… until an unusual engine failure. This rare beast, the Skoda Sport, is not often seen out in public as it resides in a private collection, but was proudly on display for us.
To build on this strong showing, and well aware of what prestige a good result at the famous French endurance race would bring, in the late 1950s Skoda made a prototype racer specifically for Le Mans, the one and only true sportscar they made after WW2. A victim of the political ideology of the time meant the project never made it to Le Sarthe and was never seen on a race track outside of the Eastern Bloc.
In a locked warehouse away from the main museum is the ‘depository’ full of rare cars that didn’t make it to the museum. The first it the truly bizarre 110 Super Sport. Made for a feasibility study for a small and light, mid-engined car, it’s more famous today for being the star of a terrible Czech B-movie called the The Vampire of Ferat where the car was a vampire that fed off the blood of its drivers through the accelerator pedal…
Slightly more serious is the stunning 130 RS A5. Skoda’s slightly tongue in cheek nickname is Porsche of the East, but this winged beauty actually seems to sport some Porsche design cues, and from no lesser Porsche than the legendary 935.
Conceived originally as an experiment in the new dark arts of aerodynamics, the 130 RS’s front mounted radiator was moved to the sides, in front of the rear wheels, which allowed the car to have a much lower nose and also much wider wings, and therefore track. With the oversized rear wing it does bare a little resemblance to a Porsche 935… if you haven’t got your glasses on. It was eligible to race as a prototype, but it was only ever seen on track once, which was at a circuit called Most in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Things were a little strange in this part of the world in Communist times. People of course wanted to race, but were very limited in what equipment they could get their hands on, so although the local prototype cars looked the part, with low sleek bodies and huge wings, and wouldn’t have looked out out place in Can Am races, they were powered by small Lada and Skoda engines, even two-stroke Wartburg ones. The A5 didn’t make it to the end of the race… and has been kept in the back room of the museum ever since.
Skoda does have some high profile results on the race track to their name though. In the early 1980s the European Touring Car Championship scored all the classes equally and in the hotly contested Division 1, against strong rivals like the Audi 50, Austin Mini and Alfa Romeo Alfasuds, the 130 RS was untouchable.
Coming tantalizingly close to the outright championship in 1980, the following year they scored maximum points to take it. It was rightfully lauded as a massive success. But since the late 1970s, its been in rallying that competition Skodas have performed for the brand’s awareness.
In the early ‘60s the Octavia TS took three class wins at the grueling Monte Carlo rally and after the short-lived 200 RS it was with 1977’s 130 RS that they properly entered the muddy and dusty arena. One of the car’s highlights was the 1977 Monte Carlo rally where in the popular Class 2 the 130 RSs came home 1st and 2nd. This class had 74 starters and only 12 finishers…
The following model, the 130 LR had a more notable career on the world stage with countless class wins in national rallies, as well as in world championship events, with such regularity that it’s moniker Surprising Skoda wasn’t really justified. It’s class, B9, wasn’t rewarded with its own championship, so isn’t as decorated as it maybe should be. The achievements of the 130 LR were surpassed by the humble Favorit. In parallel to the full Group A WRC cars there was the F2 championship for front wheel drive cars with up to 2000cc.
In the late 90s these had evolved into the Citroen Xsara and Peugeot 306 beasts that could win tarmac rallies outright… but a few years prior, the class had a more humble beginning. In 1994 Skoda won the F2 title, beating works efforts from Opel, Ford, Nissan and Renault and brought Skoda’s first FIA sanctioned championship to Mlada Boleslav. Today the team is still proud to point out that this was achieved by Skoda alone, without input from the merger with the massive VW group that was inked a few years before.
A more lasting image of this era of Skoda’s rallying history is perhaps the now legendary shot of Roman Kresta hanging over the side of a precipitous hairpin in the 2002 Monte Carlo rally.
The following Fabia, smaller, more agile and more powerful, showed some promise, especially with Colin McRae behind the wheel, but ultimately it didn’t even get a podium in the nearly 60 events the team entered with the car.
Stepping down to the Super 2000 class brought some long awaited silverware but it was with the instigation of the WRC2 regulations that Skoda have really shone, exploiting their historical niche of dominating rallying’s second tier, the Fabia R5 and currently the R5 Evo, have racked up an incredible 1400 victories in rallies all over the world since 2015, far eclipsing absolutely everything that came before. That includes five WRC2 championships, four European Rally Championships since 2012, and many, many national championships.
Thank you Robb!
No comments:
Post a Comment