idriveaclassic's video: IDRIVEACLASSIC reviews: Skoda Favorit Blackline

Today's video is about the Skoda Favorit - the first modern Skoda and the Skoda which won the hearts of Volkswagen. Today's video is sponsored by Adrian Flux! Give them a call or check out this web link for fantastic cover on your classic car: Hard of hearing like me? I've put the walk around section below! We’ve been spoilt today with this Skoda Favorit, this example is probably as close to factory fresh as we’re going to get and I’m so excited to show you her. And it’s the first Skoda we’ve ever had on the channel, so I thought we’d kick off with a model which was so important in the history of the brand. The Favorit came to market in an era where budget motoring was a big deal. Many families possessed the ability to now purchase a second car and with that, a smaller, cheap runaround was a firm favourite of the two car household buyer. The Favorit really delivered in a way that Skoda’s previous efforts hadn’t: it was decidedly more modern. Gone was the rear wheel drive, rear engine set up and in came the front wheel drive, front engine set up that many buyers wanted. Plus, the 80s was when the car buyer could be more choosy: the days of cars with varying build qualities and quirks of the 70s were over. Japanese cars had arrived with build accuracy and even Austin Rover boasted of robots making cars - this really was the era where reliability became more of a given than luck of the draw. Whilst the cars were a more modern take for Skoda, the budget element meant they kept things simple. There was one engine option, the 1.3 litre, although fuel injection models were available. The fuel injected model being touted as a ‘smoother yet crisper performance’. The car wasn’t particularly fast or particularly thirsty with that 1.3 and you’d be looking at a top speed of around 93mph and an around town fuel consumption of 35 miles per gallon whilst longer trips running a steady of speed of 56mph would see fuel consumption improve with around 51 miles per gallon. Although the car was a much more modern look for Skoda, the engine had previously been in the Estelle, so wasn’t a massive leap into the unknown for existing Skoda customers. Whilst the engine stayed the same, the body style did not. You got a choice of 5 door hatchbacks, 5 door estates and a 2 door coupe utility. All came with the 5 speed manual gearbox as we’ll demo later in the video. The car had varying degrees of popularity. In the UK it sold 50,000 units but in mainland, Central Europe, the car was a massive hit. In fact, it was one of the most popular cars of its day and was exported far and wide to places like Argentina, Bosnia, South America and Turkey. For a car that was essentially sold as a budget car, it wasn’t skimped on when it came to design. The car design was the brainchild of Bertone, an Italian automobile company who specialise in car styling. To put into context how special this was for Skoda, Bertone had styled cars for really big names like Aston Martin, Mercedes and Lamborghini…so to have them come on board and do the Favorit was a really big leap and commitment to being more modern from the Skoda brand. Although interestingly, it was this partnership between Bertone and Skoda which slowed up the car coming to market. The development and concept had kicked off in the early 80s, but due to disputes, the car didn’t get designed until 1985 and into production in 1987. Obviously, I’ve only briefed mentioned Bertone, but if you’re interested in car styling, the book Bertone Masterpieces of Style is definitely one to add to your Amazon wish list. A very interesting book! I said at the start of this walkaround that this was an important part of the history of Skoda - and it was! As you may know, Skoda is now owned by VW and it was the Favorit which really got VW interested and the deal over the line. The sale happened half way through the Favorit’s production life and I’ve heard rumblings, but haven’t been able to find concrete evidence, that Favorits built under VW owned Skoda are actually far better built. Before we head off inside, I thought I’d tell you a little about the Blackline edition. The Black Line was limited edition and available in hatchback or estate and the spec was based on the GLXi spec cars. The car had the decals as you’ll have seen when we were looking around the car, branded speakers and of course, the trim in the car which is similar to the silver line editions. Currently the website, how many left dot com, which should always be taken with a pinch of salt says there are 101 Favorits taxed and on the road of which 2 are the Black Line editions. Obviously this is a very brief overview, but the book Skoda: a car that made history is great if you’d like to go further into the history of Skoda. Now let’s have a better look at that dash, because I’m sure like me, you’re going to be surprised what you got for your money on this budget car.