Skoda celebrates 85th anniversary

The company was started by Valclav Laurin and Valclav Lement in the late 1800s and the company later merged with Skoda Works in 1924 and got the tag and logo of Skoda Auto. The first Skoda with the winged arrow logo on it came out of production lines eight and a half decades ago from Mladá Boleslav on 10 May, 1926. Three years later, nearly a 100 luxury sedans followed the same suit. The company had already purchased the license from Sapnish Hispano-Suiza in 1924. Production of the car started in 1925 and it took a year before the first car was out of the production lines.

The Skoda arrow winged logo

Built according to customer requirements, the Skoda Hispano Suiza 25/100 PS gave each person it was sold to a special feeling of a made-to-order car and of classy uniqueness. The car cost £6, 785 (Rs. 4,96,000) at the time of its launch as compared to the other models of the make like the Skoda 422 and the Skoda 860 which were priced at 1360 (Rs 1,00,000 approx) and 4200 (Rs, 3,07,000 approx) respectively.

Skoda later became a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group in 2000 though a merger between the two auto manufacturers started in the early 1990s. The winged arrowed car manufacturer’s drive has been long and progressive.

Skoda has retained the same winged arrow logo for almost 85 years till very recently, when they gave it a makeover before the Geneva Motor Show 2011. The new logo is a representation of accuracy and precision, a belief that the Czech auto manufacturer has always stood for. 

The new Skoda logo unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show 2011

From the Hispano Suiza to the Yeti, from that era to this day, Skoda has traveled a lot of miles in it journey. From a 100 cars produced in a year, stats of recent sales reflect figures of more than 6, 00,000 units sold across the globe in 2009.
Accuracy and precision