Skoda is celebrating the 85th anniversary of its famous winged arrow logo by reminiscing about a very special car.
It is the ŠKODA Hispano Suiza which rolled off the assembly line in Mladá Boleslav and was delivered to the president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Production of the vehicle commenced in the spring of 1925 and wasn’t completed until May of 1926. During three years of produciton they only made 100 units of this luxurious vehicle, each custom-built to individual customer requirements.
The car had a price tag of £6,785 which was quite high in 1920s. t could go up to £8,928 depending on the level of features. It weighed 2,700 kilograms and had a top speed of 86 mph. Didn’t know Skoda has so much history?!
The accompanying Škoda marketing literature at the time read: “The Škoda Hispano Suiza is a luxury car designed by a brilliant engineer who put his stamp on the smallest details and manufactured with the utmost care and with finest materials.”
Established in 1895 as Laurin & Klement, Škoda started life as a bicycle manufacturer. In 1905, the company launched its first car, the Voiturette A.
More about the logo:
The company started in 1859 in Plze? (Pilsen – that is where the famous beer was first brewed, and where Pilsner Urquell is brewed up today) as manufacturing railway locomotives, steel bridges etc. In 1869 the main engineer bought the company from the original owner and soon renamed it after himself – Emil Škoda. It was transformed to stock company in 1899; by this time it became the largest industrial complex of Austria-Hungary, it was also the main supplier of the army’s heavy guns.
Škoda family brought an Indian servant from US. This servant inspired the commercial director of the company to propose a new logo, which was a head of an Indian with headband, a circle clip and five quills. At the time the logo was colloquially called “The Indian”.
Later, in 1923 a simpler logo of an arrow with five quills was adopted. This was in 1925 succeeded by the arrow with three quills, which is used until today.
Meanwhile the company decided to start manufacturing the cars and obtained the licence for Hispano Suiza, as it is described in the article.
Just a bit late similarly important event took place, as Škoda company (at the time one of the largest enterprises in whole Europe) took over Laurin&Klement (company in Mladá Boleslav), which was making cars since 1905. Innitially the models had both L&K and Škoda badge, while soon only the latter was used.
The company was nationalized after the WW2. In 1948 Soviets forced communist coup and since then the Škoda’s car manufacture started to lack behind the rest of the world (but it was still better then the most of the other makes in Poland or Russia, which were merely making copies of Fiats or Renaults).
After the Velvet Revolution, the government was looking for a strategic buyer. At the time the company was producing only Favorit, a small hatchback, which was designed by Bertone (Italy) and fine tuned by some UK companies, and hence quite up to the date. The car branch (Mladá Boleslav) was sold to VW, while other branches were separated (such as the trains and streetcars manufacturer in Plze?, current holder of http://www.skoda.cz ).