The ŠKODA story began not on four wheels, but two: enthusiastic "velocipedists" and patriots Václav Laurin and Václav Klement decided to turn their passion into a career and to produce bicycles under the brand name "Slavia". The new brand rapidly became synonymous with quality and innovation. L&K soon became the second largest producer of bicycles in Czechia at the time.
Four years later they started to build bicycles with an auxiliary engine, the so-called Motocyclette. These motorcycles soon became very popular and won several awards in racing competitions, becoming the second pillar of the young company. The motorcycles from Mladá Boleslav were highly sought after, not only in their Bohemian homeland, but abroad as well.
Encouraged by this success, Laurin and Klement graduated to four wheels, and presented their first automobile, the Voiturette A. The vehicle impressed with its reasonable price as well as its practicality and robustness. This small 7-horsepower car marked the initial spark for a successful corporate development under the name of L&K, accompanied by the launch of further successful models.
In 1924 the L&K factory was partially destroyed by a large fire, which led to the company merger with the engineering giant from Plzeň, ŠKODA, marking the end of the Laurin & Klement company. Through the entire 20th century, encompassing two World Wars and a socialist-era planned economy, the commitment from ŠKODA to building high-quality cars didn’t waver.
In March, 1991 the company begins a partnership with Volkswagen. Even the company name is new: ŠKODA, joint-stock automotive company. Three years after the merger with Volkswagen, the new ŠKODA FELICIA model was born. Cooperation with Europe’s largest car manufacturer, Volkswagen, was very successful and took production to a new level.
The first model to be developed completely from scratch after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the merger with Volkswagen. It gave the decisive impetus for the rapid transformation of the company into one of the recognised global players. Since their market launch, more than five million ŠKODA OCTAVIAs have been produced, and we’re still counting.
The year 2016 marked the beginning of ŠKODA’s foray into the rapidly expanding SUV segment, where the brand had been represented up to then by the successful YETI. The first model under this new strategy was the ŠKODA KODIAQ, soon followed by the ŠKODA KAROQ.
With the Vision E study, ŠKODA provided its first outlook on the future of individual mobility. The five-door SUV coupé can travel up to 500 kilometres on purely electric power and meets the level 3 requirements for autonomous driving.
After entering the era of eMobility by launching our iV sub-brand and SUPERB iV, OCTAVIA iV and CITIGOe iV models in 2019, our first fully-electric SUV ŠKODA ENYAQ iV followed in 2020. ŠKODA is intensively perusing the electrification of its model range, and will be offering five purely electric models by 2025.