Skoda’s revolution continues with Fabia

AFTER the fall of the Iron Curtain, I was invited, with other Irish motoring hacks, to the Czech Republic by Skoda. The company was then a source of massive local pride, even if it was an automotive joke elsewhere.

To us Western Europeans, the country was manifestly grey, in keeping with the prevailing pallor of post-Warsaw Pact Eastern Europe.It was like walking back in time.

What shone though the gloom was the optimism of a freed people, who, for the first time in generations, could not only express themselves, but who had immense enthusiasm about their future as an independent, egalitarian society.