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)Â 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.
In the Fiat-Abarth OT 2000 Coupe America the need for a front radiator meant the spare could not be stood upright in the front of the frunk like in the base Fiat 850s it was based on. So they laid it down in a compartment at the front between two bumperettes, where it stuck out slightly past the bumpers so it acted as a crumple zone itself! Although you’re not likely to see one – they only built 3!