Bouncing Czechs

In the modern world of the World Rally Championship where teams test their challengers in minute detail before they even touch a special stage there is little scope for a rubbish car. Long gone are the days of miserable machines like BL’s group 4 Allegro, Lancia’s misguided Beta spyder and Citroen’s utterly abysmal BX. The stakes are so much higher nowadays ,the budgets so much bigger and technology much better. Despite this there has been one car that competed in the last ten years of the WRC that must be classed as a comparative failure, the Skoda Octavia. Measured by the standards of the dreadful cars listed earlier the Octavia wasn’t that bad. Indeed when viewed as the springboard to Skoda’s more committed assault on the championship with the Fabia it can be said the big car preformed admirably. However none of this can disguise the fact that Skoda had entered a car that was fundamentally poorly suited to modern rallying and outclassed by all its major rivals, being left to scrabble for points with Hyundai and VAG stalemate ,Seat. But realistically what other options did Skoda have in its limited model range? The humble Felica had proved itself a tenacious competitor in lower formulas when in the right hands ,especially Stig Blomqvist in the 1996 RAC, but lacked an engine large enough to be homologated into top flight rallying. That left the Octavia as the only option, sharing many of the traits that had made Skoda’s previous forays into rallying a success. It was rugged to the point of indestructibility and mechanically simple. All the WRC running gear such as the four wheel drive system and suspension came from Prodrive and the engine and gearbox were VW based and modified by a German company. It used a five valve unit with the regulation two litre capacity and turbocharger putting out a competitive three hundred bhp. However this couldn’t disguise that the chassis was unsuited. In the 60’s, 70’s and even the 80’s ,when ruggedness counted for more, such cars could do well on events like the Safari ,Acropolis and Ivory Coast. By the early part of the twentieth century manufacturers expected their cars to be reliable and competitive everywhere. The Octavia just came across as heavy and unwieldy.

Even this might have been initially excusable if the cars had been reliable out of the box, another trait of Skodas of yesteryear, but they weren’t. At their first event, the 1999 Monte Carlo, neither Armin Schwarz or Bruno Thiry got further than parc ferme before mechanical failure sidelined them. Quite the inglorious start to the year. But Skoda persevered ,spurred on by the desire to get the upper hand as the rally branch of the VAG stable. Indeed the Octavia spent most of its competitive life fighting against the mechanically similar Seat Cordoba. Whilst this scrap for points raged the rest of the rallying world wondered what VW was thinking allowing two of its manufacturers to contest the same championship at the same time. Echoes of the Fiat/Lancia fiasco in the mid seventies were all to clear.

However eventually Skoda did manage to make the Octavia the reliable rally car it had always promised to be. It was still too long though and was never lighter than 1300kg so was never destined to be particularly competitive on asphalt. However on tough gravel events with high rates of attrition it came good. The car came home an impressive 7th in the 2000 Safari in the hands of Schwarz and whilst Thiry’s 4th on the 1999 RAC was fortuitous it nevertheless showed the cars inherent strength.

Such results were the exceptions that proved that Skoda really needed a small hatchback to compete regularly for podiums in the high speed European events. The Fabia WRC was always on the cards and soon it became evident that the Octavia was no more than a stop gap and a test bed. In 2000 the team resorted to using Luis Clement, a pay-driver through and through, to help fund their championship assault. By the end of 2003 it was curtains for the big, noisy car as the Fabia debuted on the German rally. Although unreliable the new machine certainly looked much more at home on a special stage with its neat styling and short wheelbase. It had much more promise but it must be said ,lacked the drama of its predecessor which was always one of the noisiest of the modern crop of WRC cars. So the axe came down on the Skoda Octavia WRC. It must be classed as a failure if such things are measured in the amount of silverware collected. However the Octavia did succeed in one crucial respect; Seat withdrew from the sport at the end of 2000. Skoda had won the inter-company struggle to compete in the WRC and the Octavia had seen off Seat’s equally unsuited Cordoba.