90 years
Later this year, Skoda will present the next generation of its Superb, so that it can hit the roads in 2024 – exactly 90 years after the original Skoda Superb appeared on the market. Really true; the Superb, the car you know from three generations of ‘the biggest car in the Skoda showroom’, existed long before it became the space cars it is today. A little retrospective.
It was 2001 when Skoda introduced its Superb to the world: an almost unprecedentedly spacious sedan that shared its platform with – and was slightly larger than – the then Volkswagen Passat. It would be Skoda’s ‘best’, biggest and most expensive offering for a long time. A car that you could also get with more than four cylinders, that was spacious and comfortable enough to let you drive. One that was also clearly above the rest of the model range of a brand to which the Eastern Bloc image was still a lot more stubborn at the time.
What do you want with a name like that. ‘Superb’, a term that translates quite literally to ‘fantastic’ or ‘excellent’. A brand like the sober Skoda does not stick such a badge on a B-segment hatchback, but on a car that showed what you really had to offer. And apparently liked that car, because Skoda chose seven years later, in 2008, to introduce a completely new generation.
A Skoda with a V6: that was not there yet in 2001. Until the Superb came on the market.
Success only really came with the second generation
And with the second generation Skoda Superb, the success actually only started – in the Netherlands, at least. Of the first, more than 410 were never sold here in a year, which means that an original Dutch copy is now quite rare, but the second was in great demand. The brand had crawled further into the established order anyway, but with the new Superb in 2008 it also produced a much more versatile car. That was, in fact, a sedan and hatchback in one. This was due to the special tailgate, because if desired, the rear window remained in place when it was opened.
Not only that; there was also a station wagon variant for the first time, with a ballroom as a trunk. This is again the case with the third and current generation Skoda Superb station, although the hatchback now has a tailgate that can only be used as a regular hatch can be opened. In any case, the third generation still managed to find thousands of buyers, while it could no longer even bear the title of ‘upper Skoda’. With the arrival of the Kodiaq and Enyaq, there are now Skodas that operate in a higher price range and may have snatched away some Superb customers.
The rear of the second modern Superb can be opened in two different ways.
The only ancestor
Nevertheless, the brand will ‘just’ bring an entirely new Skoda Superb onto the market next year, which will again be available as a hatchback and a station wagon. So that car follows exactly 90 to after the original Superb. But what about that now?
Well; from 1934 to 1949 Skoda also produced a Superb. Even then it was the range topper of the brand, which in its ultimate form even had a 4-liter V8 with about 95 hp under the hood. However, most Superbs of old had a six-cylinder, including all cars that were eventually built purely for the purpose of serving in the war. Over the entire 15-year period in which the original Superb was built, 2,500 units saw the light of day. 1,600 of these were military, 900 were for sale. The original Superb was not a huge commercial success, but his heirs would do their best to make up for it almost 70 years later.
The military version of the original Superb.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl