Sam Glover
Sam relishes the pleasure of driving a slow car quickly
Sam drives a slow car… fast.
What’s blood-red, styled by Bertone, has well-established motorsport pedigree and is faster than a Porsche 911 on tight-and-twisty Monte Carlo rally stages? Correct! A 1994 Škoda Favorit. This was the second time car-hammering specialist Paul Johns and I had competed in the November Sun Run, a navigational rally that provides an excuse to thrash 70 classics through the French Alps.
In 2015, we used my 110 per cent beige Volvo 245. We spent the following 11 months discussing bespoke rally car concepts for the 2016 event. A Škoda Estelle with a 1.4-litre Felicia engine was the prime contender, closely followed by a Moskvich 412, a Tatra 613-3 and a Wartburg 353. Three weeks before the start, it occurred to us that we hadn’t lifted a finger to realise any of these plans.
Paul had a Škoda Favorit Lxie on ebay at the time. It had the dregs of an MOT, but it’d been a garden ornament for six months. It nominated itself to be our Sun Run steed by attracting no bids at £300. Paul fitted a set of fetching Pirelli ‘P-slot’ alloys wearing two varieties of secondhand winter tyres. He installed posh Boge shock absorbers at the front and firmer Bilsteins at the rear. Suffering an attack of vanity, he welded metal over the rusty crevices in the rear wheelarches and painted the odd-coloured front wings roughly the right shade of red. A basic service – plugs, oil, filters, wipers, brake fluid and similar – was carried out incrementally at petrol stations en route to the rally start at Bar-sur-aube.
I’ve never been entirely confident with frontwheel drive cars on the limits of their adhesion, having spent my formative hooligan years learning how not to pirouette rear-wheel drive Datsuns, Ladas and Volvos. The Škoda helped me to finally get my head around the matter. It was spectacularly well-balanced, responding to vicious abuse with complete neutrality. Front-wheel drive pub wisdom actually worked: lift off the throttle to tighten the line, slam it to the floor to straighten it.
The Škoda was in its element on classic Monte Carlo left-right-left-right corners – the sort that have a mountain on one side and a gut-wrenching plummet on the other. It could be driven with a complete lack of respect. Hugely overoptimistic speed could be carried into blind corners, safe in the knowledge that everything could be worked out satisfactorily on the way round. If the corner turned out to be 90°, massive speed could be retained. If it turned out to be 180°, excess speed could be drifted off with a satisfying screeching noise.
We were often able to catch and pass rear-wheel drive sports cars, which had to be driven more sensibly to avoid death. They’d get us back on hills, of course. On ascents, the overladen Škoda’s 54bhp often called for first gear. On descents, its slightly iffy brakes had to be rationed to avoid embarrassing smells and mind-focusing sponginess.
Day three of the rally suited us to a tee, boasting 250 miles of relentlessly knotted but modestly inclined roads along mountainsides and gorges. It brought us pathetically childish pride to be the first car to reach the final passage control, having spent the afternoon dispatching Porsches, Lotuses, Alfa Romeos and other rally-prepped exotica. As far as we were concerned, we’d won.
As far the the results were concerned, though, we hadn’t won. Getting to the end first isn’t the point of a navigational rally. We were supposed to answer questions about key points along the route and scan the verges for tiny boards bearing codes. At this, we failed brilliantly. We ended the fourth and final day a victorious 62nd of 65 finishers.
The Škoda remained in respectable health after 850 miles of merciless flagellation – and completely uniform tyre wear front-and-rear attested its impeccable handling balance. I drove home with two firm conclusions: I should do more rallying and I should own a Škoda Favorit.
‘Excess speed could be drifted off with a satisfying screeching noise’