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Skoda Once Tried to Convince New Customers the Fabia vRS Was Made of Meaner Stuff

There was a time when superminis still had a shot in the global market. The electric shift and shrinking profit margins condemned them to oblivion: Ford was simply the first one to admit that with the Fiesta. To celebrate the times when people with low budgets could still drive new cars, we selected a pretty funny commercial Skoda did to present the spicier version of the Fabia in 2012.
Skoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuff 16 photos
Photo: Skoda
Skoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuffSkoda presented the Fabia as full of lovely stuff, but the vRS was made of meaner stuff
Called vRS (or simply RS, depending on where it was sold), this Fabia was produced from 2010 until 2014 in the second generation of the B-segment hatchback. It was powered by a turbocharged 1.4-liter engine delivering 132 kW (176 hp) at 6,200 rpm. That was a pretty reasonable punch in a car that weighed 1,390 kilograms (3,064 pounds). Yet, the Fabia probably had a reputation for being a soft-touch car, which was something Skoda had to change to sell a high-performance version. This commercial was an amusing effort to get there.

The video starts by presenting one of the most famous Fabia ads. A team builds a cake car while Julie Andrews sings “My Favorite Things.” The slogan is that the Fabia is “full of lovely stuff.” The vRS had to be less edible, so to speak.

That’s why one of the factory workers turns off the television showing that cake commercial with an arrow. And that is just part of the story: the worker is wearing a helmet with two horns and shoots with a crossbow pistol.

There is no stamping in the factory. Unnecessary pieces of steel are removed with bites and headbutts. A worker with brass knuckles punches the door to create the door handle niche. The steel comes from recycled katanas, and vultures are around the body-in-white, which looks like a carcass waiting for them to clean it.

The commercial shows the vRS has tires sculpted in a machine. In some languages, people say that they “poisoned” the engine as a synonym for preparing it, which is probably why snake poison is used to make the engine more aggressive. A worker with a mechanical arm drinking green juice paints the Fabia vRS green. The idea is that the juice is the paint, to be honest.

The black roof the spicy supermini had was not painted: it was marked with tire tracks made with a superbike. The Skoda badge is laser-engraved by a worker with a laser cannon installed where his right eye should be. He probably did not know Superman actually had heat vision, not lasers. Ok, I didn’t, but lesson learned!

The commercial ends with us discovering that the crossbow pistol was built with the vRS’s windshield wipers. When the Mean Green is ready, the workers have to keep it at a distance with a pole, and the machine attacks even with that precaution. Skoda finishes the advertisement by stating that the vRS is made of meaner stuff (than the Fabia). Too bad it was not enough to keep it alive.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
Gustavo Henrique Ruffo profile photo

Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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