FRANKFURT (dpa) – A car that carries the name “Superb” is not easy to live up to, especially if the company that makes it is called Skoda and had a reputation for decades of making vehicles that were shoddy and unreliable.
Nobody seriously expected the Czech subsidiary of the Volkswagen empire to come up with a high-end model so soon after re-establishing itself in the marketplace but with the success of the Octavia and Fabia range, Skoda, which was taken over by the German company in 1991, decided to take the plunge.
The Superb is based on the VW Passat platform yet manages to retain a dignified identity of its own.
It measures 4.8 metres long, 10 centimetres longer than its Volkswagen stablemate, putting it into the ring alongside the BMW 5 series or Mercedes E class, both excellent cars and difficult acts to follow. Engines available include several powerful four cylinders and a six-cylinder Common Rail diesel unit.
The car is due to be launched officially in early 2002 and if all goes well Skoda aims to build 30,000 to 50,000 Superbs a year.
Skoda board member Professor Wilfried Bockelmann is confident that the Superb will take off. Speaking at a Frankfurt motor show, he explained that the company gave itself plenty of time to develop the car that is designed to carry on the pre-war tradition of producing elegant limousines. A beautiful example of the pre-war Skoda breed takes pride of place on the Skoda stand.
“This is exactly the car we need in order to establish Skoda in a new class. It provides so much that customers will probably say – it offers more than we expected,” Bockelmann said.
“It’s also a bold step. I think that two or three years ago people would have laughed us off the block, but with the Octavias and Fabias we have shown we are capable of producing quality cars. Customer surveys, especially in Britain, have shown this,” he added.
For decades the Skoda MB with its noisy, air-cooled engine mounted at the back was an object of derision anywhere outside the communist bloc. The car even inspired a tongue-in-cheek book called “101 things to do with a dead Skoda”.
But the revitalized marque has seen profits grow steadily in recently years and last year 435,000 people bought a Skoda.
Bockelmann is determined to put those state-owned days under communism behind the firm and is eyeing the young, upwardly mobile in eastern Europe as new customers.
“This is the first genuine luxury car from Eastern Europe since World War II,” he said.
