Skoda Octavia RS 245 Takes On Arrow, Sets World Record

Using the Skoda Octavia Combi RS 245, martial arts coach Markus Haas managed to catch a flying arrow shot by Austrian Olympic archer Laurence Baldauff.

Since this marked the farthest flight of an arrow caught by hand from a moving car, it is now regarded as a world record. The stunt was also done in order to pay homage to Skoda’s logo, which features a winged arrow.

The record was set at the Zeltweg air base in Austria, and in order to pull it off, a total of four months of planning were required. Once shot, the arrow reached a top speed of 134 mph (60 meters per second / 215 km/h), giving the martial artist just 0.5 seconds to catch the 68 cm-long (26.7 in) object.

Overall, there was also a distance of 70 meters (76.5 yards) between the archer and its moving target.

However, because the arrow flies in an arc and not a straight line, the actual distance over which it could have been captured by somebody via a car’s open sunroof was reduced to around 30 meters (32.8 yards), thus giving Haas such a small window to pull it off – 0.5 seconds.

As for the Octavia, it was a completely stock RS 245 wagon model, meaning power came from a 2.0-liter TSI unit, capable of churning out 245 PS (242 HP) and 370 Nm (273 lb-ft) of torque. In a straight line, the Octavia RS 245 Combi needs just 6.7 seconds in order to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) from a standstill.