Why Does Skoda Use vRS In The UK, And RS In Europe?

We love a good Skoda vRS product here at Car Throttle. The Octavia vRS is one of the most complete cars on the market, old Fabia vRS’ are still some of the most tempting affordable hot hatches on the market, and even the EVs are relatively cool.

No surprise then, we often write about them, as does much of the UK motoring media, in fairness. To Europe, though, the presence of the ‘v’ when we do so may be a little perplexing.

On the continent, Skoda has simply branded its quick cars as ‘RS’ ever since the 180 RS and 200 RS prototype rally cars built in 1974 – standing for Rally Sport, if you hadn’t guessed. That would’ve been the case in the UK too when the first Octavia vRS arrived on our shores in 2001, if not for a certain blue oval.

You see, there was a time when Ford made interesting cars. It’s easy to forget looking at its current line-up, we know.

‘RS’ had long appeared on several of its fast cars. Think the Escort RS2000, the Escort RS Cosworth, Fiesta RS Turbo… so on and so forth. In short, RS had become synonymous in the UK with Fast Fords, which would inevitably be stolen three times over.

In 2001, Ford of Europe was working away on its next entry into that historic lineage – the Focus RS. With Skoda rocking up and planning to use RS for the first time that year, the story goes that Ford UK stepped in to protect its monopoly on those two letters, threatening a lawsuit to prevent Skoda from using it.

So, Skoda decided to get clever with it and add a third letter, ‘V’, for Victory. Because Victory Rally Sport is one better than Rally Sport, or something like that. Curiously, Ford of Europe didn’t seem to have the same problem despite the Focus being built in Germany.

And so, vRS became a cult favourite in its own right in the UK and the British arm of the Czech manufacturer uses it to this day. A shame that Ford seems to have forgotten about RS itself, though.