Return of a Legend: Skoda brings to life the 1100 OHC

The celebrations of the 120th anniversary of the Skoda Motor Sports Division are underway with the rebuilding of an amazing and memorable race car.

Get the 1100 OHC

Keenan Cohen

07/02/2022

Monday, 07 February 2022, 17:15 Updated: 19:14

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The 1100 OHC, as beautiful as the day it was presented (Photo: manufacturer's website)

It was not easy to be a carmaker under Soviet rule.

When strategy is determined by party officials, when politics stifles all freedom of thought, engineering freedom is subordinated to instructions from above and anything that smells like fun, leadership pleasure might have been perceived as a sign of squinting to Western material culture and marked as an anti-revolutionary act.

And yet, even under the boot of the Soviet Union, when it comes to the Skoda, the Czech manufacturer has always continued to fuel the whispering embers of innovation, engineering freedom and even investment in compassionate motor sport for the Chilean.

And not that the communist bloc did not have a motor culture of racing, but compared to what took place in Western countries, where there was a reciprocal relationship between what was happening on the racetracks and showrooms - it was a drop in the ocean.

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Only two were made from any configuration and competed in endurance races (Photo: Manufacturer's website)

The history of Skoda and motor sports begins even before it was "Skoda" as early as 1901, when the firm was called L&K (Lorraine and Clement - the founders) and two years after they introduced their first motorcycle and sent it to participate in the endurance race between Paris and Berlin.

Their motorcycle was the one that crossed the finish line first, and it did so at a speed gap from the competitors that the race organizers were not yet ready with the official timing system - and therefore disqualified from an official victory.

Skoda Rapid at the Monte Carlo Rally 1936 (Photo: manufacturer's website)

But not only on two, but also on four wheels and throughout the teens, twenties and thirties of the 20th century participated the one who later became Skoda in racing, including a huge success with the Rapid Six who participated in rally and endurance races.

With a finish in second place in its category at the prestigious Monte Carlo Rally of 1936 with the popular Sport.

Even after World War II, and already under the Eastern Bloc, the company continued to develop and run race cars in a variety of categories.

The Octavia, the 130 RS and others.

She also participated in the Eastern European Formula 3 rounds with the single-seater MB1000 with a 1,000 cc engine.

Hapoalim's 911 Skoda 130RS gave head to the rally and race tracks (Photo: Manufacturer's website)

But not for the glorious history of the company that won against all odds, we gathered, but for a very different and very forgotten car in the history of this manufacturer - the 1100 OHC Coupe.

After four years of development, the small race car was presented in an open configuration from which two units and two more units of the box office configuration were produced.

It was powered by a 1,100 cc, four-cylinder engine with a top camshaft that produced a modest 90 hp, but with a weight of only 555 kg and when it pulled its five gears to the limit - it qualified for a top speed of 200 km / h.

The racing career of the two units built from the open version on the endurance and sprint tracks was short, lasting only three years between 1960 and 1961, from the fruitful years of the Skoda Motor Sports Department.

But changes in the regulations of their racing teams have made them irrelevant.

These two cars are alive and well today,

A crazy little cash register (Photo: Manufacturer's website)

The fate of the two coupe cars did not improve on them, the escalation in the Cold War, the hardening of the Soviet line in relation to leisure products and certainly making the export markets irrelevant, dropped a 5 pound hammer on their chances of becoming a real consumer product.

These cars, it was already clear, would not go on the market.

Both cars were sold in 1966 to private owners, the one you see in these pictures was bought by Hannos Harbank, the name is important because he was the father of Michael Harbank - the manager of Skoda's motor sports division today.

He replaced the unique engine of his time with an engine he pulled out of the Felicia of the time and put the unique racing engine on display at Skoda's Technical School.

And if you think it's a sad fate, think again, the other car was much less fortunate.

It was acquired by another Skoda employee - Dosen and Livni - later the director of the company's testing department and the father of one of the directors of its recovery department today - Michael and Livni.

The car was used by the family for about two years, then sold to new owners.

With him, she ended her life when she crashed into a support pillar on the highway and burned down completely, not before her driver managed to escape through the rear Plexiglas window.

The chassis with the original engine, yes, let's put the fuel tank right next to the hottest component in the car ... (Photo: Manufacturer's website)

The wrecked and burned car was dismantled and its rear axle, gearbox and splitter came by no means to the Czech National Technical Museum, from which they were purchased 15 years ago by Skoda.

The chassis itself, the front axle, the brakes and pedals and a number of other parts have rolled into another private collection.

From it they were acquired by Skoda in 2014.

A year later, two wings of the company are merged, that of the museum and that of the manufacturer's prototype center, which specializes in building special cars from scratch for a joint project - a renovation of the box office car with careful restoration.

With the use of traditional production methods and when they rely on the original surviving drawings.

What made the renovation even easier was the fact that quite a few of those small parts that were always hard to find - were actually off-the-shelf components of the company’s regular models in those years.

The door handles came from the Skoda 1200 sedan, some of the switches from the 440 Spartak and the Octavia, the steering wheel from the popular and these are just the notable examples.

Restored based on the original drawings and plans stored in the company's archives (Photo: Manufacturer's website)

But there was another challenge, to make it imperfect.

You see, when such cars were built in the 1950s, the base for the body was a full-size wooden model, on which the metalworkers would bend the thin aluminum panels (between 0.8 and 1mm) with hammer blows and other tools, sculpting all the curves along And because the panels were made by different people - the result was amusing - the right part of the car was not exactly the same as the left

. At this point the people of the Skoda Museum came into the picture who through photos, testimonies and historical documentation worked together with the builders of the body itself from the prototype department to produce the car in the most imperfect way.

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The car has been restored to its imperfect condition perfectly (Photo: manufacturer's website)

And so, after 62 years the 1100 OHC rolled out again from exactly the same place it was first built.

And this time, too, there were some talk-crazy people behind it who took this story of building a real sports car with abysmal seriousness.

Only this time they did it with a combination of imaging technologies, computer-based design and 3D model printing - techniques that in the late 50s of the last century were not even in the wildest dreams of the people who built the original cars.

Only one thing has not changed - she is still as classically beautiful as the second after she was born.

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