Forgotten Skoda 1000 MBX Reimagined As Sporty 2+2 EV

Inspired by one of Skoda’s rarest production cars, it’s the latest in the brand’s ‘Icons Get A Makeover’ series
Skoda 1000 MBX concept - front
Skoda 1000 MBX concept - front

It’s always a fun day when an email lands in our inbox showing off the latest entrant in Skoda’s ‘Icons Get A Makeover’ programme. This series of concepts allows the brand’s designers to run wild by reinterpreting its historic models as modern cars, and even if they have basically zero chance of making production, the end results are nearly always tantalising.

One such email has arrived today, and within it is a modern reworking of one of Skoda’s rarest models of all – the 1000 MBX. A two-door version of the rear-engined 1000 MB saloon of the 1960s, just 2517 examples of the 1000 MBX coupe and its later bigger-engined derivative, the 1100 MBX, were made.

Skoda 1000 MBX concept - interior cutaway
Skoda 1000 MBX concept - interior cutaway

That makes it perhaps not the first candidate for a 21st-century reinterpretation, but we’re nevertheless big fans of what designers Antti Mikael Savio and David Stingl have cooked up. They’ve transformed the 1000 MBX into a squat, boxy 2+2 coupe full of neat details.

For instance, while the original was a two-door, the concept gets a pair of Mazda RX-8-style backwards-opening rear doors, giving access to a pair of back seats with squabs that can fold up to open up extra storage. Also on the inside, the dash is a clear glass module onto which information is projected. Savio and Stingl obviously had a sporty car in mind, too, given that their images feature a map of Czechia’s Most race circuit being beamed onto it.

Skoda 1000 MBX concept - rear
Skoda 1000 MBX concept - rear

Despite that, Savio says it’s a car envisioned as a highly useful daily hack: “It’s not meant to be just a fun weekend coupé to be a second car in the family, but a vehicle with exceptional everyday usability.” That’s why it features height-adjustable air suspension, to allow it to get down rougher tracks without making bad crunchy noises or for things to be loaded into it more easily. The lack of a rear windscreen is also said to open up a little more cargo space.

Since it’s destined to remain nothing more than a set of renders (sad face), nothing’s detailed about the powertrain or platform beyond it being an EV. Like last month’s reworked 110 R coupe, though, this looks like it’d be right at home on VW’s scalable MEB platform. Once again, though, we’ll just have to imagine the world in which that’s the case.

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