wrote in message
...
On Monday, 15 April 2019 20:00:41 UTC+1, NY wrote:
tabbypurr wrote in message
...

Ah, so there's a Skoda theme here :-)

It might be a Skoda thing.

I'm told 'skoda' means 'it's a shame,' dunno if true. If it is they
have
finally done a good job of departing from their habit of making
horrible
economy cars. I had a ride in an Estelle once - far more unstable than
their reputation ever warned me.

I remember when I was about 10 I sometimes used to get a lift to school
in a
Skoda 100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_100 in the same shade
of
sickly green as the first photo the Wikipedia page. It always had a faint
smell of puke because my friend's younger sister was carsick almost every
time she went in it (she was fine in her dad's Rover 3500), and the smell
lingered no matter how much they tried to clean it. The seats were very
hard
embossed plastic which left a corresponding pattern on my legs, even
through
my school trousers. The engine made a burbling sound and there seemed to
be
no relationship between engine speed and car speed - as if either the
clutch
was slipping very badly or else (which I know isn't true) it had a
variable-ratio gearbox. Was it a two-stroke, as in the Wartburg and the
Saab
96 - Wikipedia doesn't say. The difference between the metallic clang of
the
Skoda's doors closing and the quiet, restrained click of the Rover 3500
was
very noticeable: I was always glad when it was my friend's dad in the
Rover
rather than his mum in the Skoda.

Skoda have certainly improved dramatically since those days of the 1970s.
I
have a friend who has a Skoda (no idea what model) which is as good
inside
and under the bonnet as most other cars - I presume that is the VW
influence.

Why were old Skodas so horribly ugly?

For the same reason Trabants and Wartburgs were, they didnt have to
care what they looked like, there was nothing else for the suckers to buy.