Can we admit Skoda is cool now?

Wednesday, 25 November 2020

OPINION: Hear the one about the policeman who pulls into a service station and asked the attendant if he has a fuel cap for his Skoda and the attendant says “Yeah, that sounds like a fair swap”?

No? Then congratulations! You’re not old!

While the news that the police are swapping their Holdens for Skodas might seem like a good opportunity to break out all those old Skoda jokes (Why do Skodas have heated rear windows? So your hands don’t get cold pushing it!), it might pay to just hang on a minute there Boomer, because they are only any good if you are over a certain age.

Is Skoda cool yet? Surprise – it’s been cool for a while now.

And that is quite a big number these days, because – believe it or not – Skoda has actually been cool for a while now!

* Skoda's first fully electric vehicle will come to NZ

* Skoda Kodiaq RS: the fastest seven-seat SUV (sort of)

Skoda first used the vRS badge on the Octavia in 2000, along with a supercharged 1.8-litre four-cylinder making 132kW.

* Skoda Octavia was launched 60 years ago

* It's a quarter-century since Skoda became cool

Skoda even held the title of fastest seven-seater SUV around the Nurburgring – briefly.

Yeah, sure, back in the 70s and 80s (and, hell, even into the early 90s) the jokes were well and truly justified as the cars were basically Soviet-era crapboxes that had a reputation for being underpowered, unreliable and rusting faster than they could drive downhill with a tailwind.

But that all started to change in March 1991 when the Volkswagen Group entered into a joint venture with the Czech government, before eventually assuming complete control over Skoda in 1994.

Volkswagen poured the money into Skoda, refreshing its ancient model range and, more importantly, revitalising the brand’s image.

While Skoda came and went from the New Zealand market throughout the 80s and 90s, its rebirth here began in earnest in the early 2000s when, under the control of the Giltrap Group (which hold the local distributorship for the larger VW Audi Group), the brand re-emerged.

Skoda supplied the bones for the only car designed and built in New Zealand – the mighty Trekka.

Admittedly to the same old jokes (What do you call a Skoda with a sunroof? A skip!), but the sheer quality of the cars it was peddling this time made short work of those and now Skoda is one of the most awarded (we have given it several over the years) and recommended car (according to Consumer NZ) brands in the country.

But cool? Oh yeah – there are some very cool Skodas…

Most of them wear the RS badge (previously known as vRS, but apparently the v is silent… and invisible now) and there have been some stonkingly good RS Skodas unleashed here since the brands re-emergence.

The Octavia RS continues to be a massively underrated (except by those who know) performance Q-ship, while the now sadly departed Fabia RS was an absolute blast of a feral little hot hatch. Hell, even the current Kodiaq RS is a superb thing for an SUV and briefly held the title of fastest seven seat SUV around the Nurburgring.

Okay, so at the time it was actually the ONLY seven seat SUV that had been officially timed around the legendary track, but hey – it was a fun thing to claim for a while.

And if you ignore the awful Soviet-era crapboxes from recent history, Skoda has a remarkably rich history that stretches back 125 years to when it started as Laurin & Klement back in the 1890s.

In fact, Skoda is the fifth oldest carmaker in the world and one of the few with a completely unbroken history.

Of course, one of the coolest Skodas ever was actually built in New Zealand, and while it wore a few discrete Skoda badges (on the hub caps) it wasn’t actually called a Skoda – it was the legendary Trekka, the only New Zealand designed and built car to enter mass production.

Looking for all the world like a Land Rover, the Trekka was based on the Skoda Octavia and launched to the world (well, New Zealand) on the 2nd of December 1966 as an agricultural vehicle.

Because it was based on the Octavia, howerer, it wasn’t actually 4WD, so wasn’t much use off road…

However it eventually became popular with both rural buyers and urban tradesmen and 708 Trekkas were sold in its first year of production. By January 1968 the 1,000th had been manufactured and when production ceased in 1973, close to 2,500 had been built.

Today the legendary Kiwi Trekka is actually recognised by Skoda as the company’s first (albeit unofficial) SUV and several excellent examples have been bought up by the factory and shipped over to the Czech Republic. Yes, really.

So thanks to the investment and effort of Volkswagen globally and the persistence and promotion by the local distributor those jokes (How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill it with petrol!) are well and truly out of date these days.

It’s such a shame then that after a decade and a bit of being cool they now have to become police cars and we have to come up with a whole new range of jokes…