Over the past couple of weeks, Donut Media did features on the tuning scene in India, as well as the most popular cars in each country in the world. Besides Toyota, there was a whole of talking about a brand called Skoda. They make a family car called Octavia, and today, we get to pretend it's also a supercar.
Skoda belongs to the VW Group and really took off back in the mid-1990s. The brand was at the right time and place to take advantage of Volkswagen's engine and platform technology and is currently popular not only in Europe but also in India and China.
Although they also sell a lot of SUVs now, the Octavia is still a bread-and-butter model. It's technically based on the same platform as the Volkswagen Golf but always manages to offer more space and practicality, which partly explains its appeal.
From a design point of view, the Octavia is about as interesting as white bread. Even the hot RS versions struggle to stand out. But before Skoda's loyal fans come after us with pitchforks for saying that, we'll just switch our focus to this rendering.
Rostislav Prokop dared to turn the Mk3 Octavia from 2013-2017 into a mid-engined machine of sorts. It's got the bland front end of a family car combined with the sort of sexy body of a Honda/Acura NSX. While every salesman in Europe wants to buy an Octavia RS with its GTI engine, a mid-engined car takes things to the next level.
And as strange as this might seem, there are multiple precedents for a mid-engined Skoda. First, we need to mention the classic Rapid, 120 or 130 series models, which did have the engine in the wrong place. Also, Skoda will have lots of EV models soon, just like VW, and most of them are technically RWD (though nobody's going to call them sports cars).
And third, Volkswagen nearly approved a sports car of sorts, which could have reached the Skoda brand if successful. We're talking about the 2009 VW BlueSport, a pre-production prototype. If we remember correctly, the study had a 2.0 TDI, and both Audi and Porsche should have made their own versions.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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