Retrospective: Skoda Centenary

Czech car maker Skoda celebrates a centenary of car-making this summer (2005). Over a hundred years, most surviving car companies experience changing fortunes, changing philosophies and changing attitudes towards their products, but Skoda's long history is more varied than most. Although the butt of jokes throughout the 1970s and '80s, when a lack of investment under Czechoslovakia's Communist regime led to a series of idiosyncratically designed, hopelessly outdated and poorly received models, Skoda actually started out as a luxury and high-performance car maker. These days, under the ownership of the Volkswagen Group, Skoda goes from strength to strength, with an extensive, ever-growing range of modern, well-engineered and well-built practical vehicles. We look back on Skoda's first 100 years.