The best-preserved Škoda Favorit came to a new owner for 600 thousand crowns – Nauzal

Thirty years ago, a brand new white Škoda Favorit was launched in Greece from a local dealer with a new owner behind the wheel. For the driver, it was a return to driving after many years. She managed the 34-kilometer journey perfectly. But when she parked in the garage not far from her house, she decided that driving was just not for her.

And so the odometer of the white favorite showed the number 34 for the next three decades. In the underground garages on the outskirts of Athens, the story of perhaps the most well-preserved favorite in the world was written, as the car company describes it. Today the car is back in the country where it originated. In Czechia. And with a person whose name has a lot in common with the Škoda brand.

“Someone discovered the car in Greece in the fall of 2022 and put it up for auction. When I saw it, I said to myself that I must have such a piece of history,” says car racer Jiří Mičánek Jr. When Favorit went on his first and last ride in 1993, Mičánek was only seven years old. But he was already close to the cars.

His father, Jiří Mičánek Sr., has been competing in prestigious formula championships in what was then Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe since the 1970s. He won more than ten titles of the champion of Czechoslovakia both on circuits and in uphill races.

In the final of the fight for the unique, Mičánek Jr. remained against the only opponent – another Czech competitor Boris Vaculík, a participant in the Dakar Rally, among others. “When we found out, we called each other and told each other straight up how far we were willing to go. I was taller, so we agreed that we wouldn’t push each other anymore,” Jiří Mičánek laughs today.

Even so, the car cost him 24,000 euros, roughly 600,000 Czech crowns. That’s about six times what the car cost in 1993 when it was made. After accounting for inflation for three decades, the price actually corresponds almost exactly to the current value.

Two months after the auction, the Škoda Favorit traveled in a shipping container to Frankfurt am Main, where the new owner picked it up. Of course with a lift. The new owner does not even plan to drive the car very much, so that the car remains as new as possible for as long as possible.

Thanks to the fact that it spent thirty years in underground garages, it really looks like it just came out of the factory. There are even protective plastic covers on the seats, the paper labels are completely intact in the engine compartment, the clean wheel arches with their snow-white color reveal that the favorite drove the 34 kilometers from the shop to the garage on a dry road.

A few imperfect details can still be found. Three decades in a South European garage left its mark on the car’s paint with scratches from other cars or passing drivers.

The car comes from the generation after the facelift, which was introduced in 1993. At first glance, it is revealed by the plastic mask with the emblem in the middle – the original model had the car company’s logo on the side in the spirit of the original design. The interior is already in a modern gray decor, the original version with a beige dashboard corresponded to the contemporary taste of the dying eighties, when the Favorit was first introduced in Czechoslovakia and in Europe.

The Greek dealer – probably at the request of the owner – equipped the car with some design accessories. For example, by imitating the wooden decor of the dashboard, or by then modern colored stickers that copy the side line of the car. Otherwise, it is the base version of the LX. Its owners had to do without a tachometer, for example, its place in the dashboard is taken by a giant clock.

Under the hood is a time-proven engine developed directly in Mladá Boleslav. It has a volume of 1.3 liters and a power of 40 kW. It is already controlled by Bosch electronics, which replaced the original carburetor. Of course, the only thing the new owner did to the engine was change the oil and filters. And of course the battery.