This Roller Coaster Advertises With Skodas Yet Delivers Ferraris Which Makes Me Feel Cheated

I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m a big amusement park guy; when I lived in LA we had a Disney locals pass of some kind and we’d take the kiddo there on like a Wednesday evening when it was all nice and empty and that was fun, but beyond that I don’t usually seek out amusement parks as places I want to go. That said, I did happen to see an ad for a roller coaster the other day that grabbed my attention like a set of strong fingers wrapped around testicles, but that was because of a glimpse of a car.

And not just any car. A Skoda. A classic rear-engined Skoda, a 1000MB, which is just not a car I generally see around unless I really seek one out. For a Skoda to just appear in an ad on American market television (is a streaming service still considered “television” that way?) is a pretty unusual happening.

After a good bit of searching, I found the ad:

See that? The hero car in there is a Skoda 1000MB, just like I said! And it looks amazing, tearing along through that en-creepified Black Forest road, full of gnomes and witches and trolls and maybe rule-stickler Germans!

I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the full ad, so the first shot I saw was a fleeting glimpse of the rear, but it’s a pretty unmistakable car-butt, with that wide air-exhaust grille:

I also don’t think I fully realized the 1000MB had that central roof crest before; it’s sort of like the sagittal crest you’d find on an ape skull, used to anchor the strong jaw muscles. But it also makes sense in a Czech context, as the other famous Czech carmaker, Tatra, definitely appreciated dorsal fins and similar roof crests. The one on the 1000MB adds a nice touch, and continues onto the engine lid:

Anyway, I got excited at the idea that an amusement park here in America might be using roller coaster cars made up to look like rear-engined Skodas! So I looked into it, and was a little disappointed with what I found. The roller coaster cars, while very nicely done, were not made to resemble Skodas:

Instead, Busch Gardens seems to have made roller coaster cars that most resemble a Ferrari 250 California:

It’s not exact exact, but I think the main visual cues are there: the recessed headlights with the smaller driving lamps in the lower grille, the rectangular hood scoop, chrome windshield surround, wire wheels, thin bumper blade, general overall shape, and so on. And, really, a Ferrari is probably a better choice for a mainstream, amusement park-going audience. A Skoda is a pretty deep cut.

Here’s one of the designers of the ride talking about the new cars, and showing more variations and details:

I get it. Ours is a world where roller coasters are far more likely to feature Ferraris than Skodas. I know that. But why the tease? Why did they feature a Skoda in that ad so prominently? So geeks like me would get excited and write posts like this?

Huh.

Well done, Busch Gardens. You’re a worthy adversary.