Škoda, one of the world’s largest car manufacturers, has a reputation for being excellent value for money. It is the 3rd oldest car manufacturer in the world and sells over 1 million cars per year all over the globe. Over the past century, the Czech brand has increased dramatically in value, resulting in a long list of award-winning cars that are distributed worldwide.
Since joining the Volkswagen group in 2000, the brand has gone from strength-to-strength. Škoda have a whole host of awards to their name, including Auto Express’ Best Manufacturer and Motor Trader’s Car of the Year award.
Here are a few things about Škoda that you may not have known before.
Skoda was originally a bike manufacturer!
Škoda have not always been a car-manufacturing company. Originally, Škoda founders Laurin and Klement began creating and selling push bikes.
In the December of 1895, mechanic Laurin had a bike that needed fixing. He visited a bike shop in Czechoslovakia and was extremely disappointed with the service when staff were rude and refused to fix the bike.
Laurin and Klement learnt how to make bikes in order to provide a service that they were looking for. They became good at creating bikes and many push bikes were sold, so they decided to take the next step and add motors.
They started making motorbikes in 1899, eventually resulting in creating over 4,000 different types of motorbikes. Eventually cars were brought into the mix when the world went mad for cars, with Škoda replacing motorbikes with cars in 1905.
Think “RACING CARS”
In the late 70’s, Škoda’s 110R and 130R models were popular choices for racing cars. By the early 80’s people with Skoda cars were able to specify a certain sport package from their local car dealer… Pretty impressive!
To this day, the 110R and 130R models are a popular choice by racers all over the world. The main fan base comes from Eastern Europe, but car rallying has been in Skoda’s activity since near the beginning of their creation.
Skoda cars are often rally favourites with RWD engines in their early models.
For 17 years in a row, they won their class in the RAC using the 130LR Estelle, which was powered by a 130bhp engine.
The most expensive Skoda ever built was a… CAKE
Another interesting fact about Škoda is that their most expensive car ever built was not a driveable car… It was a replica cake of the Fabia model for their 2007 TV advert.
The cake cost £500,000 to put together, surpassing the record of most expensive Skoda product to be made set by the Skoda Superb car.
Auto Express said that the Fabia cake advert was one of the best Skoda has created. They said, “Fabia cake was less of a promotion and more of a spectacle”, which was probably one of the reasons why the campaign was so successful.
The advert was loved by a number of advertising festivals, receiving honours by the British Television Advertising Awards and Creative Circle Awards.
The UK premier of the Cake advert was on May 17, 2007 and sparked attention worldwide. Within two weeks, 37,000 people had visited the Skoda Fabia’s site and a further 260,000 had viewed the ad on YouTube, proving to be one of the most popular advertising campaigns that Skoda have released.
Skoda’s are ECO – Friendly
If you want to do your bit with helping the environment, Skoda won’t hinder you.
In fact for every car sold in the Czech Republic, they will build 1 of their own pellet heating plants and plant one tree to try and combat the emissions given by a car.
Basically, you can drive around guilt-free in a brand new car knowing you’re not completely damaging the environment… I suppose it’s better than nothing!
With Skoda becoming more and more popular around the world and more used Skoda cars becoming available, it’s essential to have great Car Warranty for your Skoda. Let us help you protect your car with our cheap warranty. Unfortunately, we don’t provide car warranty for cakes.