Skoda Favorit as a young occasion – From the Old Box

It’s 1993, you have about 8,000 guilders to spend and you want to put a compact car in front of the door. Then of course you can go for a used Volkswagen Polo of about five years old with half a ton on the counter, but what if you take that money to the Skoda dealer Well, then a Favorit that is only three years old will be parked in front of you parked which has only covered 13,500 km. Sounds like a nice deal, right? We wanted to see if it seemed too good to be true.

We started positively: “You can’t really find more car for less money. We looked at a Skoda Favorit 1.3 L from the first owner with 13,500 kilometers on the clock. It had cost 14,495 guilders at the time and was now offered for 8,000 guilders .” So there was already almost half of the new value, while there was still a fairly young and inexperienced car. That certainly arouses interest, although we also knew that we had to be careful with our expectations with a Skoda. “Objects from before the takeover by Volkswagen are sometimes lacking. We also have to bear in mind when judging that it was built in a period when there was not much attention to the quality level. More important at the time was that the planned production was achieved.”

Still neat, but not really refined.

At first glance, ‘our’ Favorit seemed to be in good order. The interior was already outdated and felt cheap, but everything worked and it still looked neat. An advantage of the material used for the dashboard: although it was rock hard, it was also fairly indestructible. However, you had to be prepared for rapid wear of the seat upholstery. A closer inspection of the white bodywork of the Favorit revealed a striking flaw: there was already a point of rust on the roof. Ai. It wasn’t much, but we thought that was very fast even 30 years ago. When starting the Favorit, another problem came to light: the starter motor did not feel like it. With some grinding and only on the second attempt, the simple four-cylinder of the Favorit started with a raw roar.

The overall impression was that of a neat but clearly cheaply built car. Moreover, one of the old Skoda stamp before Volkswagen started to interfere. Not that you should expect very great miracles from that, but the later Favoritjes did look a bit more solid in some respects. We therefore concluded that 8,000 guilders was actually even a bit on the high side. Waiting for a somewhat ‘later’ copy might have been interesting.