Skoda Octavia

You can’t get away from class. We were a Wolseley family. The Vanden Plas Princess and the Armstrong Siddeley came later. We slipped downmarket with the Austin Sixteen in which I passed my driving test, but that was bought in 1948 or so, when cars were hard to come by. It was replaced by a Wolseley Six-Eighty. Not a notable success; its single ohc was unhappy with teenage over-revving but it looked classy with an upright radiator and wood facia. Wasn’t up to next-door’s Rover 14 maybe, but it was better than Austins, which were, by and large, bought by people who believed the Dependable slogan and were NQOC. Austins weren’t stylish but they were well made. Father was in steel and his metallurgist chums said Longbridge was fussy about the steel it was buying for gearboxes. He found that convincing.

Austin, Armstrong Siddeley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley; all, alas, gone. Yet class distinctions in cars remain. When I was road testing it helped make up your mind about cars once you had identified likely buyers - easy with BMWs. People who bought BMWs buyers got other BMW owners (like me) a bad name. Racy and aggressive they demanded cars that were fast and handled well. BMW buyers were fusspots so you set the road-holding bar higher for BMWs.

Ford buyers – difficult to avoid stereotyping. They were always cost-conscious high-mileage reps. Jaguar buyers went for style, refinement and prestige. They are no longer the same as the Jaguar buyers of our Wolseley years – Jaguars then were much too, well flashy really, like Uncle Bob, who had had Vauxhalls and then a black Jaguar with huge headlights and too much, so my mother thought, voluptuous curves and showy chrome.

Hyundai and Kia buyers now are connoisseurs of the long-distance warranty and born-again Austin buyers, looking for good metallurgy and unpretentious quality, buy Skodas. Dependable, regular, no nonsense solid worth, Skoda’s styling is derivative but the customers want it like that. Nothing radical; good proportions are more important than pretendy avant garde.

Skodas look modest just like Austins looked modest. They were styled by the unlikely Dick Burzi. Born in Buenos Aires, Ricardo Burzi joined Lancia in the 1920s. “Styling” was only beginning and he augmented his income drawing cartoons for newspapers, only to get into trouble for drawing some of the emerging Duce, Benito Mussolini. You couldn’t do that in Italy and Burzi had to flee.

Fortunately Vincenzo Lancia chanced to meet Herbert Austin on a liner, recommended him, and so the Italian-Argentinian joined Longbridge in 1929. His reponse to challenges proved variable. He was partly responsible for the splendid 1940s Sheerline and Princess, based on chief executive Leonard Lord’s Bentley, but he made 1945 Austins look like 1930s Chevrolets. His big solo effort, under instructions from Lord, was the ill-starred Austin A90 Atlantic.

Skoda (Octavia press launch above - my BMW behind) has avoided such flights of fancy. It knows its place, unlike the flagship VW Passat, which has got longer and sleeker. The cards in the Skoda pack have been shuffled, taking the Octavia a bit up-market and making it bigger, to accommodate the Rapid in a lower slot. Octavia is on VW’s MQB platform along with the Audi A3, Seat León and Mark 7 Golf and is temptingly priced at around £20,000, unless you specify lots of bells and whistles. It rides, handles and drives well. It isn’t fast, 11.5sec to 60mph, it is quite economical at about 45mpg without being super-frugal and qualifies as thoroughly worthy. Not faint praise for those old solid sensible dependable Austin customers.

Fireworks welcome


Skoda set off pyrotechnics for the launch of the Rapid. It wasn’t the fifth of November, it was the sixth, but who was counting? Ellenborough Park is, “Huge, part new, part restored,” according to Fiona Duncan of The Daily Telegraph, “a mass of scrubbed-up Cotswold stone bristling with turrets, arches and towers, dates from 1500.” It was home to the Earl of Ellenborough, and then a girls’ school before becoming, “a hotel progressively more tired, until bought by investors in 2008. Millions of pounds later it reopened with new wings, 62 bedrooms, a rather exposed outdoor pool, a lovely, intimate spa and a path to Cheltenham Racecourse. There is surely nowhere else an owner or trainer would prefer to stay. There have been some very clever moves in reinventing Ellenborough Park as a luxury hotel. The owners could easily have entrusted a tricksy interior designer with the job; they could have cut corners and made every room the same; or they could have gone to the metallic wallpaper and velvet devoré fabric shop, as so many similar hotels do when they want to introduce a contemporary look. Instead, they turned to Nina Campbell.”


There’s no devoré fabric in a Skoda Rapid, and Nina Campbell probably would not have done an interior that reflected so much in a windscreen. But this is a good car with, like so many these days, costly extras. It was all very well portraying it at a cost-conscious £12,900 but even a middle-of-the-road 1.2 SE is £14,650. By the time you add “packs” of this and that it is £17,320. Still, it’s well-detailed, on sale next week and slots in below Octavia. Skoda has determined what prices the market will stand and the market now values top-line cars as thoroughly satisfactory. Encouraged, it is making the hugely successful Octavia and Superb premium, with the Rapid occupying middle ground underneath.

Rapid is only slightly smaller with much the same room inside, a hatchback that places it firmly in the family market. The styling is crisper than Octavia and a bald man from Skoda told us, at some length it has to be said, about the jewel-like quality of the tail lights and how much luggage you could get in the boot. He needn’t have bothered. The proportions are decent and the detailing excellent, down to an ice-scraper concealed in the fuel flap and a windscreen clip for, I suppose, showing you have paid-and-displayed.

There are four petrol and one diesel Rapids, three trim options and all drive well with reservations about those with low-profile tyres. I drove a 1.2 SE in the morning and a 1.6 diesel Elegance in the afternoon, with what felt like solid rubber on 16in “Dione” wheels instead of the SE’s 17in 6J “Camelots”. I cannot understand why a good PR team allows Marketing to put silly tyres on otherwise competent road cars. Most drivers will never feel the extra point zero something extra cornering power on low profiles and they will certainly feel the nobbly bumps and the pull on cambers. Big wheels and thin tyres may look a little racier but who, in this instance, is kidding whom?

The Skoda Rapid SE had, the bald man assured us, lots of costly equipment like an anti-misfuel insert (a narrow neck on the filler) electric windows in front and a leatherette gaiter on the handbrake, manual air conditioning and tinted glass. But the metallic paint was an extra £495, Driving Pack (cruise control and parking sensors) at $600, Protection Pck (boot lining) £150, Sat-nav £550, Summer Pack (Climatronic dual zone air conditioning and tinted rear windows) £500 and Style Pack (smarter alloys) £375.
I didn’t risk the rather exposed outdoor pool but I did manage a portrait by Sarah-Louise, the fastest-drawing artist I’ve ever seen. Note to daughters – I’ll trim those eyebrows.

A Car Fit For a King

The Palace bought a La Salle in 1938, but where is it?
Mystery of the ‘missing’ royal car


BUCKINGHAM PALACE is tight-lipped about a beautiful coupe it bought from Czechoslovakia in 1938, writes Eric Dymock. It was discovered during research into a new book on Skoda by the authors Ivan Margolius and Charles Meisl, but their requests for information from the royal mews met with no response. The car was ordered from Carrosserie Sodomka in Czechoslovakia, but its recipient and subsequent history remain a mystery.
“It is possible that it was bought for the Duke of Windsor,” Meisl said. “Or it may have been a gift for another royal family. Either way the palace isn’t saying.”
Sodomka constructed bodies for other makes besides Skoda, and the stylish royal convertible was built on an American La Salle chassis. The shape followed contemporary French coachbuilders’ style with faired-in headlights, flowing wings and chrome “streamline” decoration.
The Windsors’ preference for large American cars, instead of the rather staid Daimlers in which the royal family had ridden since the turn of the century, may explain the palace’s reticence. As Edward VIII, the duke took delivery of two Buicks, built in a Canadian factory, within a month of George V’s death. The break with Daimler was explained by the king’s wish to encourage empire trade.
Skoda Laurin & Klement, by Ivan Margolius and Charles Meisl. Osprey Publishing, £25.
The Sunday Times 15 November 1992

Škoda Superb Estate


It is not often you can endorse official fuel consumption figures. On a brim-to-brim test over nearly 400 miles, I came within a single mile per gallon of the Skoda Superb Estate’s combined 38.7mpg. Mostly motorways and dual carriageways, with a fair amount of Kent B-roads, it was an impressive return for a 1550kg (4317lb) spacious estate car keeping mostly although not obsessively to speed limits. The 1.8 TSI Elegance is smooth, quiet, roomy and at £23,550 restores the dignity Skoda enjoyed as a great industrial and armaments firm. It made cars in Edwardian times; fine sporting and luxury machines by Laurin & Klement. Restoration by the VW group restores it to world rank.

A Superb Estate could replace my faithful 4x4. It has space for the motoring dogs. A heavy duty tray for the 595l (21cuft) loading space costs £150. It is 1700l (60cuft) with the seats folded (they could go walkies; there is more room than any competitor). I could even have it with sophisticated Haldex four wheel drive, so clever it only drives all of the wheels some of the time and hardly ever all the wheels all of the time.

It makes up its mind which ones to turn, depending on circumstances. A cunning control unit counts up wheel speed, accelerator position, engine rpm and what the stability sensors say. If there is ten per cent slip it reacts within a single revolution, transmitting the requisite torque. On slippery going it consults the ABS, braking one front wheel while applying pull to the other.

This is relaxed economical six-speed tranquillity. Cruise control is included in the price along with Columbus touch screen satellite navigation, leather upholstery, which I could never do without, heated seats, different side air conditioning, buzzing parking sensors and clever detailing that includes an umbrella in the rear door.

Adaptive Front light System (AFS) also makes up its own mind, producing the right sort of beams for town, main roads or motorways. A rain mode reduces reflective glare, cornering lights point sideways and, amazingly, the driver can instruct the Maxidot computer to adjust the lights for left or right hand drive. No more black patches when you go to the ferry. The spread of brightness is superb. You don’t realise how effective and subtle it is, especially the swivelling beams, until you drive something else.

The Skoda Superb richly deserves the awards it has had. It is supremely confident, confers complete peace of mind. There is a bit of road noise and they say the diesels are not quiet even though they win prizes too. Yet it is so well made; the trim is carefully stitched and moulded, nothing has been skimped. The fit and finish would grace a BMW. It is an organised car that it is hard to fault. Elegance specification includes rear parking sensors, Bi-xenon headlights, chrome roof rails and a tyre pressure monitor making it a bargain in equipment. It may not have the emotional appeal of a BMW, a Jaguar, or a Mercedes-Benz yet Skoda is on the threshold of joining them among the classic European makes of car.

Fabia GreenLine




I am probably not the first to compare the plain interior of the Fabia GreenLine to that of the eponymous coach. You wouldn’t call a car Bakerloo without expecting some kind of comment. It is upholstered and trimmed to be hard wearing, like a GreenLine bus. I suppose they took in ‘Green’ to appease tree huggers, even if it doesn’t quite get down to the 100g/km C02 mark they all think is going to save the planet.

Astonishing, is it not, how BBC presenters and the like, continue parroting all the mantras about global warming as though it was Gospel, forgetting the discrediting of the IPCC, the Met Office, the University of East Anglia and all that dogma about carbon.

Enough of that. The little Fabia is well made, feels safe and stable and although not quite in the bargain basement at £12,555, the low depreciation Skodas attract nowadays should more than compensate. What a change there has been since 11 October 1997, when I had been to Mlada Boleslav and found the biggest transformation in a European car factory for a generation.

It was still necessary to explain to readers of The Daily Telegraph how profound the change was. They were so accustomed to treating Skoda as a joke that it was necessary to remind them that it had had a glorious past and looked like having a glorious future under VW.

Skoda remains a credit to the German management, who took a shabby run-down name and reputation and transformed it, although oddly enough it seems to do better with up-market models such as the Octavia and Superb. The Fabia is more worthy than great. There are four trim levels, 1,2,3, Sport and GreenLine. The 1 is fairly basic. It has ABS and electric windows but steel wheels and a tyre repair kit in lieu of a spare wheel at well under £10,000. The 2s, 3s and Sport get better at up to £14,000 and GreenLine is somewhere in between with manual air conditioning.

The GreenLine’s drawback is a rather noisy 3-cylinder diesel. It may be the most fuel efficient Skoda ever, sharing its engine with the VW Polo Bluemotion and Seat Ibiza ECOmotive, but it is harsh compared with other diesels. Still with the prospect of 53mpg urban, 83mpg extra urban and 69mpg combined, what’s a little engine vibration between friends, and the Fabia is roomier than either. I used it in the snow. They fit skinny tyres to reduce rolling resistance but it didn’t seem to matter. Still, if I have to go by bus I’d like a little more luxury.

SKODA: The Forgotten Years



Dark satantic mills wasn't in it. The first time I went to the Skoda factory at Mlada Boleslav in 1962, the communists were in charge, the cars were terrible and the factory was a ramshackle collection of timber-framed old buildings that all seemed to be on different levels. A lot of the 10,000 workers, who produced 200 cars every day, were women. Nothing wrong with that but a lot of the others were prisoners out on parole. Nobody could be sacked; even gross dereliction of duty only meant demotion, and the factory was plastered with pictures of President Novotny, Lenin and workers marching shoulder to shoulder clutching spanners. Red Starred exhortations to work for the glory of the CSSR might have been so much wallpaper, compared to the effect my official guide had on account of his position in the local ice-hockey team. Drab cars, drab place, and even if you had enough crowns to pay the hefty deposit adding your name to the Mototechna state car sales organisation, you still had eighteen months to wait for one of the spindly Felicias or Octavias. These were front-engined throwbacks to an earlier age, with swing-axle suspension and wobbly handling. The transverse leaf springing at the front was replaced with coil springs before Skoda went over to the rear-engined1000MB in 1965, which was an effort to copy a Renault Dauphine - not a good start. Astonishing to think they carried on making the wretched things until 1977.

Well it's not like that now. Last time I went, the factory was a model of what a car factory should be. A smooth-running production line with a horde of mini-factories feeding in bits made by outside suppliers at the appropriate moments. A lot of the workers were still women but the proportion of paroled prisoners was smaller.

It is quite easy to forget Skoda's astonishing industrial past. The Prague-born authors of the book (reviewed above in The Sunday Times, 15 November 1992) gave a splendid and well-researched account, going back to the long-established firm of Laurin & Klement, which Skoda took over in 1925. It detailed Ferdinand Porsche's connections with the armaments side of the company in the 1930s, one photograph showing Porsche at the wheel of one of his failures, a military cross-country tow truck, which churned to a stop on a muddy hillside during tests attended by Hitler. Pressed into service by the Nazis, the Skoda factory was bombed by the American Eighth Air Force. In the closing days of the war the fleeing Luftwaffe attacked it again to try and prevent its expertise and facilities falling into the wrong hands. Skoda's takeover by the Volkswagen Group, spiritual successors of Dr Porsche, was documented in the closing chapter of a book that was an important contribution to the history of the European motor industry.


This is not a Skoda. This is the wonderful Waverley, the world's last sea-going paddle steamer, in the Kyles of Bute. photo Eric Dymock