In the days when there still was an Eastern Bloc, the Czech-built Skoda was seen as a Communist-Party “people's car” and, to decadent Western eyes, a joke in rather poor taste.
Since the VW takeover, however, Skoda is demanding to be taken seriously. Build quality has improved by several orders of magnitude and, by 2001, Skoda bosses were confident enough in their brand to introduce the vRS performance badge.
And now its flagship, the Octavia vRS, has become the newest member of Bonneville's legendary 200 Club, the qualification for which is an officially timed run at more than 322km/h (200mph in English).
The 373kW “salt spec” challenger was built in England to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the vRS badge. Driven by journalist Richard Meaden, it qualified for all four categories of Speed Week competition on its first practice run with a speed of 191mph (306km/h).
In his first “official” run Meaken raised that to 195.69mph (313.10km/h) and he finally broke the magic 200mph barrier on his sixth run of the day at 202.15mph (323.44km/h).
Job done? No way! With four days left of Speed Week (it runs from August 13-20) the team has set its sights on the two-litre production car record, which stands at 216mph (346km/h).
The Octavia vRS Bonneville Special is a standard production Octavia vRS with its suspension lowered by almost 80mm and a new sub-frame carrying a race-prepared intercooler.
The engine is also standard, other than the replacement of the standard turbo with a humungous hairdryer from Garrett, running significantly more than two bars of boost and kicking out a claimed 375kW on high-octane racing fuel with water/methanol injection.
The salt racer was built to Southern California Timing Association safety regulations, with a reinforced roll cage, parachute, fire extinguishers and window cage.