I feel like I’ve been sleeping on Skodas here for Cold Starts, which is a shame, because I really like these clever Czech cars, especially the rear-engined ones from the ’50s to the ’80s. I’m told in Western Europe these were often some of the cheapest cars on the market, even less than a basic Volkswagen Beetle, and yet you got a significantly larger, four-door car. This old brochure image for the Skoda 1000MB I also find pleasingly baffling, because what’s going on with the floating doppelgänger there?
So, we have the blonde woman driving there, or at least in the driver’s seat and beaming happily out the open window at something off there, seemingly a good distance away and a bit above the horizon, all while a duplicate of herself, at about 80% scale, hovers over the Skoda’s hood, arms out and back, like she was transported there midway through officiating a baseball game, and having just decared the runner sliding into home to be safe.
Who is that floating sub-scale woman? A sprite? A fairy? She’s a duplicate of the driver, so is she, like, the personification of a conscience? If she had a harp (the musical kind) or horns (non-musical kind) this would be easy, she’d be one of those internal devils or angels, but there’s only one of her, and she’s free of any props like halos or tails that end in those spade-like tips.
I’m really not sure just what is supposed to be conveyed here, but, as a Skoda fan, I’m going to say it’s working.
Oh, also, here’s something I didn’t know about the 1000MB, here in 1000MBT form:
These Skodas had one of those spare tires in a separate compartment under the trunk! You know, like a Renault Dauphine:
I love this feature in cars! Change your tire without having to unpack your trunk, crammed as it is full of fragile valuables, like Faberge eggs or wedding cakes or whatever.
Also, that picture on the right of the two people exiting the car, looking up, improbably is a fairly common old car brochure conceit I like to call the God, the Freelance Photographer shot. Or maybe it’s more of a This Is How Cool You’ll Look To Birds shot? It’s something.
Skoda gets a bad rap. They made artillery from dinky 65mm mountain guns to triple 12″ battleship mounts before diversifying into cars, trucks and tanks. Modern Skoda makes a better VW than VW.
O wonder if the lady in question was a celebrity. Maybe a famous ventriloquist or something?
The first rear-engined Skoda appeared in 1964, not in the 50’s. Same year as flying astral bodies.
White car and floating lady stuck on a black background.
This looks exactly like the “flannel graph” that my 2nd grade Sunday School teacher used for story time in the 70’s.
Don’t know what a “flannel graph” is? Google it once and you’ll not be able to unsee this for this picture ever again.
In Soviet Union we do not have decadent capitalist backgrounds in our pictures! No cars on runways, on boat docks or in fields. Nyet!
Also, our superior women can fly.
So guessing the mushrooms have kicked in. And she is having an out of body experience. While looking for cops, and wondering if it’s safe to try and drive home.
Whenever I see a post about Skoda, I’m required to check out their range on the UK website. Skoda, along with their Eastern Bloc cousin Dacia, always have interesting lineups of low-priced cars. Perhaps someone will export them to the US as other cars become less affordable.
Malcolm Bricklin, where are you?
Probably not likely, Volkswagen wouldn’t want Skoda competing with, well Volkswagen, and Nissan would probably block Renault from trying to sell Dacia here for similar reasons, the same way they blocked Mitsubishi from selling rebadged Renault-Samsungs.
We did get Skodas in very small quantities from ca 1961-1967, and Malcolm Bricklin did have preliminary discussions over importing Protons and Oltcits to sell alongside Yugo, but his company filed for bankruptcy before anything was signed.
That Skoda is eating an Oreo!
This is exactly as I imagined you during your procedure. As a middle aged blond woman floating over a Skoda.
I grew up hearing stories about how bad Skodas were, and how every time one of my dad’s friends needed help fixing a car, it was “some crappy Skoda”. But the more I learn about them, especially the 50s and 60s models my dad’s friends would have had, I feel like my dad’s affinity for German cars simply wouldn’t allow him to appreciate the quirkiness of the Skoda model lines.
I had a separate tire compartment in my TR3. It was a lot less useful when the original 155 profile tires became unobtanium and the newer 165s didn’t fit.
Skoda – the only brand that lets you bi-locate!
The Dauphine looks like it’s sticking its tongue out at us.
Getting ready for a French kiss.
Oh, I think the subtext is pretty clear: Driving a Skoda makes you feel free! Your imagination (like an arm-flapping doppelgänger) can soar over the Iron Curtain into the clear blue skies of freedom, escaping the depressing existence of life under the Communist regime. The couple exiting their car are clearly bidding farewell to their own flying doppelgängers as they soar away to happiness. This was also symbolized perfectly at the end of Terry Gilliam’s brilliant film “Brazil”: https://youtu.be/tBxYzhIRCRo?si=UCB_StxVq3es6oj4&t=289
Hmm, lore has it that the day you see your doppelgänger is the day you die. That might explain why the driver in the first picture is looking away in order to avoid looking at her doppelgänger. The two people exiting their Skoda and looking up might be seeing their floating doppelgängers which does not bode well for them.
A friend in England just bought a Skoda Hybrid. If he likes it it has to be good.
I think the flying lady is doing her best imitation of the logo thing to her right.
That Skoda One Thousand Megabyte car is quite the little engineering marvel, ain’t it?
I wonder how many decadent capitalist pigs you can sneak across the border in that tire compartment? If Torch didn’t know about it, you can bet the border guards didn’t either.
The twin sister jumps an Octavia at the mere sight of the Superbly designed new 1000MB. It Rapidly became her Favorit vehicle for Citigoing. It even has enough Roomster for all her pet Yetis. That frunk could even hold a Kodiaq bear.
Communist bloc advertising was always just a little “off”, like, they knew they had to do it, and they knew the basic components of it, but there was something missing in the process
The picture of the couple standing outside of the Skoda and looking up are waiting for their car to be searched while trying to reassure the machine gun toting guards in the watch tower that they are not smugglers or trying to escape across the Iron Curtain.
The smaller woman is the larger woman’s memory of being a stand-in for Sally Fields on the set of “The Flying Nun.”
I have no idea what Skoda wanted to convey with the top image, but it is eye catching. That makes it a success as far as advertising goes.
There’s “eye catching” and then there’s “destracting,” which is not a particularly successful advertising strategy (says the old fart who worked in advertising for 40 years).
The good twin bought a Skoda 1000MB. She’ll use her new Skoda to escape the endless, black void.
The bad twin did not buy a Skoda 1000MB. Unfortunately, she’ll be spending more time in the endless, black void until she wises up.
In other news, I can’t help but automatically shorten the Skoda 1000MB to Skoda 1GB when I look at it.
I came here to post the same comment about 1GB but I guess back in the 50s and 60s they weren’t thinking about megabytes and gigabytes and were still fooling around with 6bit to 36bit “words” and other such units that seem like nonsense to us today.
that would be a Skoda 1024MB
Good point!
Actually I think you were right the first time. GB is 1000, GiB is 1024.