This car was not
designed for mass production. The aim of the ŠKODA TUDOR concept from
2002 was to showcase the potential offered by Czech designers.
It was a test the car passed with flying colours.
Not only did they design a
well-balanced car that is still beautiful today, but they also laid the
foundations for the brand to be inspired by Bohemian Crystal and foreshadowed
ŠKODA’s signature C-shaped lights.
A
traditional four-seater coupé combining timeless elegance with sporty
rapaciousness, the ŠKODA TUDOR can now be found in the collection
of the ŠKODA MUSEUM in Mladá Boleslav. In 2000, the car’s
“spiritual father” was Wilfried Bockelmann, then Head of Technological
Development at ŠKODA.
The design team surpassed all expectations. Guided
by the then chief designer Thomas Ingenlath, Zdeněk Cibulka designed
an elegant coupé called the TUDOR, and this car was what impressed
Wilfried Bockelmann most. With a well-coordinated and enthusiastic team
in place, the Design Department then continued this work apace. One
of the keys to success in design work is a good
model-maker. Originally 1:4, this model was enlarged on a computer
and used to produce parts for an actual-size plastic model. The final
car followed immediately after that. The whole process took a matter
of months.
Besides the car’s two doors and its smoothly descending
roofline, the side view is dominated by two rising lines: one
of them starts at the headlamps and ends on the bottom edge
of the side windows, the other one (lower) leads from the door handles and
extends as far as the rear wings. These two lines intersect
in the middle to dynamically widen the rear wings.
Tudor I a name
featuring prominently in SKODA’s history. Thanks to the car that
spearheaded the company’s renewed production operations in the aftermath
of the Second World War. The ŠKODA 1101 was based on the pre-war
POPULARs and bore the same numbering as the type assembled during the war.
However, what stood this car apart from its forerunners when it was
introduced in May 1946 was its boldly revamped, appealing design. At the
time, the carmaker was keeping staunchly to the curt number-based name
Š 1101, so it was the motorists themselves who came up with
a better name for the popular and reliable vehicle: as it had
a two-door body, they used the English “two-door”, which evolved
in Czech into TUDOR. This name quickly caught on and was even used
for other body versions, including the four-door sedan and the estate. The
range also included a convertible and an open-top military and police
vehicle. In 1948, the TUDOR was facelifted and renumbered Š 1102. By the
time production ended in 1952, almost 67,000 of these vehicles had
been made. More than two thirds were exported, so they could be seen
in droves on the roads in Pakistan, Australia and Brazil.
In Europe, the bestselling export markets were the Netherlands and Poland.
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