From rags to riches: the saying suits Skoda perfectly as, for the first time ever since it was founded in 1905, the Czech automaker managed to produce more than a million vehicles in one calendar year.
The car that marked this milestone was a white Fabia 1.2 TSI, which rolled off the production line of Skoda’s main plant in Mladá Boleslav.
To put this number into perspective, in the first 86 years of its operation Skoda had manufactured a total of five million vehicles. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain was dissolved, it had but a single model, the Favorit. Its acquisition by the VW Group in 1991 marked the start of the brand’s transformation.
Under the German group’s umbrella, Skoda has recorded an impressive six-fold increase in its output. This was made possible not only by increasing its line-up to seven models and more than 40 variants but also by expanding beyond Central Europe, where it was focused, to other markets: nowadays, Skoda is present in more than 100 countries across the globe.
Since 2010, China became the brand’s number one market and in the first 11 months of this year it accounted for a quarter of its total sales. Other than its Mladá Boleslav plant in the Czech Republic, Skoda vehicles are also manufactured in factories in China, Russia, India, Slovakia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
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