Classic Skoda 100 Reinvented As Modern RWD Sports Saloon

We always feel rather conflicted when Skoda unveils one of its ‘Icons Get A Makeover’ designs, a fun ongoing project that sees the company’s designers pick a car from the company’s history and reinterpret it as a modern concept.

On the one hand, we love that the designers are given the opportunity to let their imaginations run free like this, and the series has led to some incredibly cool designs, but on the other hand, it makes us sad that none of them stand anything but the vaguest chance of hitting production.

Case in point: the latest entry is designer Martin Paclt’s take on the Skoda 100. Built between 1969 and 1977, this humble rear-engined saloon was the first Skoda to sell over 1,000,000 units. As befitting a car built by what was then a communist state-owned carmaker, it was dependable, rugged and unpretentious.

Those words don’t appear to apply to Paclt’s reimagining of the 100, which sees it transform into a luxurious rear-wheel drive electric sports saloon with an air intake that looks like it’s doing a Honda NSX-R GT tribute act.

Paclt says he deliberately avoided going down the route of a direct retro reinterpretation, instead adding certain nods to the original 100 onto a car that’s bigger than the already ginormous Superb. Those nods include the LED light strip running across the concept’s nose, a reference to the chrome trim that ran across the front of the 100, and the extra air intakes on the rear quarter panel that cool the electric motors, sat in roughly the same place as the ones that fed fresh air to the original car’s 988cc four-cylinder.

One thing the original 100 did have that this concept doesn’t is a rear windscreen, that area instead being used to ‘mirror the sculptural language of the glazed front’ as well as house that extra shark-fin air intake.

As usual with these concepts, the chances of Skoda actually building this are probably around the same as it giving up on making cars entirely and starting to produce wood-carved sculptures of otters instead. Basically, don’t hold your breath.