Skoda Auto, in honor of the 120th anniversary of its motorsport division, has recreated the historical Czechoslovak car Skoda 1100 OHC Coupe of the late 50s.
Such a sports car was used in endurance racing in 1960-1962. The load-bearing space frame and engine were preserved from the original car, the body had to be built from scratch, using archival factory documentation. Work on recreating the car was jointly carried out by the Skoda Auto factory museum and the company's prototyping center.
It is important to clarify here. Skoda 1100 OHC was once built in only five copies - three spiders and two coupes. Although they were created on the same aggregate base, the bodies of the cars are fundamentally different in terms of manufacturing technology: the spiders had external panels molded from fiberglass, and the coupes had hollowed out aluminum sheets. Two original spiders have survived to this day. The situation with the coupe was dramatic - one burned down many years ago due to a fire, the second was sold to private hands in 1966 and, in fact, was also lost.
The remains of the second coupe, including the chassis, space frame, front axle, engine, brakes, pedals and some small parts, were bought by Skoda Auto from a private Czech collector in 2014. Fortunately, in the 50s, these sports cars were built on the principle of using parts from mass-produced Skoda cars as much as possible, so the most difficult thing was to make a new body.
Skoda says that before building a new body, the company's specialists had to make a 1:1 scale model from mock-up plasticine using historical photos and drawings. The form was scanned, then matrices were made, on which body panels were already manually knocked out. As provided by the drawings, aluminum sheet with a thickness of 0.8 mm and 1 mm was used as the material.
The door handles are from the 1200, the ignition switch is from the Octavia/440 Spartak, and the three-spoke steering wheel is from Popular.
The car weighs 555 kg, it is driven by a 1.1-liter naturally aspirated gasoline engine with a capacity of 90 hp, it is aggregated with a 5-speed manual gearbox. The maximum speed reaches 198 km/h.
How many man-hours and money was invested in recreating the coupe is not specified.
Skoda restored the Czechoslovak sports car of the early 60s
