The legendary Favorit and his siblings, Jan Tuček
The book is primarily dedicated to the Favorit – the first production car from the Škoda brand with front-wheel drive, which the Mladá Boleslav-based carmaker developed in close cooperation with the Italian bodywork company Bertone and the Porsche development center. It was presented to the public in September 1987 at the engineering fair in Brno.
The publication recalls its somewhat complicated origin and its role in the process of the modern emancipation of the Mladá Boleslav car manufacturer, when it became the fourth brand of the Volkswagen Group in April 1991. It clearly maps the changes that the Škoda Favorit, Forman and Pick-up cars underwent during their active careers from 1987 to 1995, and recalls the diverse range of their variants and projects that did not make it into production.
Motorsport enthusiasts will be delighted by the overview of activities with modified Škoda Favorit cars in car competitions, circuit races and hillclimbs. The text containing technical data of individual models and an overview of production and export is accompanied by 430 archive photographs, many of which have not been published before.
The Road to Favorit, Jan Králík
The author knew more than thirty-three years ago that the long and, above all, thorny path of development and production of the Favorit passenger car was worth carefully documenting. He had to reject the ideas of that time, he waited and waited! Developing anything new while trying to comply with the extensive tangle of many restrictions and prohibitions resulting from completely meaningless regulations was completely impossible during the years of normalization. Even though the original idea to produce a new type of passenger car within the framework of the Common Market came from the highest party positions. But the design tendencies of world car manufacturers indicated significantly different solutions from the originally intended ones. The gradual development, sometimes even illegal, was taken up by the administrative people in Mladá Boleslav. The amount of work with development and then with the preparation of production was unimaginable, but the people were enthusiastic. The most energy and time was taken up by the battles with the „windmills“ – at that time in the form of the state apparatus. When the Favorit was put into production, the leaders were melting in superlatives. Just like Ing. Andrej Barčák, then director of the PZO Motokov business group: "The Favorit was a groundbreaking project for Škoda. Škoda designed and then produced a car comparable to their European competition under significantly worse conditions. At the beginning, there were just a lot of restrictions, nothing was approved, big risks were taken, but Škoda had no reason to be ashamed of the result."„
Published by Motor Public, hardcover with dust jacket, format 22.5 x 21.5 cm, 118 pages
ISBN 978-80-906693-1-4.