I live in a country where a Skoda is the most normcore vehicle you can think of. A grey new-ish Octavia is pretty much “A Car” and not much more, its normalcy somewhat shadowing the quirkier cars the Czech manufacturer has churned out during its various eras.
Luckily there have been some wonderfully weird Skodas over the years, including the lovely yellow Felicia Fun lifestyle pickup and the fastback Rapid coupes with their similarly sporty predecessors, so Skoda’s reputation as an interesting carmaker will never become completely tarnished.
But far the weirdest one is the Skoda 110 Super Sport. Originally born as a futuristic, angular concept car for the 1972 Brussels motor show, the 73-horsepower 1100cc Super Sport had a lifting canopy instead of conventional doors.
Later on, the only existing car got a slightly bigger engine transplanted into it, which gave it all of 104 horsepower and upped the top speed from 180 km/h to 211 km/h. It wasn’t really fast, but it was certainly rapid for a ’70s Skoda, partly thanks to its sub-1000kg weight.
And that’s not all. In the early 1980s a Czech film director needed a convincing hero car for his vampire film, about a Christine-like car that thrived on blood. The unique concept was facelifted for the occasion, to become the fictional “Ferat Vampire RSR”, and gained more contemporary lighting front and rear, along with black paint. It still looks like a Skoda thanks to the detailing and 120 sedan tail lights, but there’s a touch of low-volume French manufacturer style to it, with a large helping of homebrew weirdness. The gold BBS are a nice touch, and they must have been worth a pretty penny in 1981 Czechoslovakia.
There’s a great clip on YouTube about the Ferat Vampire RSR, complete with a Kavinsky soundtrack that perfectly accompanies the movie footage. Check it out:
[Photos: Skoda]
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