What the ”birth certificate” of the first car from Mladá Boleslav looked like

As Škoda Auto marks 130 years of its existence, Škoda Storyboard shows important moments of its history using objects from the archives or museum. Today, look at what the official operating permit for the brand's first car, the Voiturette A, looked like.

28. 1. 2025 130 years

Voiturette A is now part of the permanent exhibition of the Skoda Museum. Now 119 years old, the exhibit is a window into the wooden days of the Laurin & Klement brand, and just as the appearance of the two-track car itself has changed to date, so too has the paperwork associated with the permit for operation. The preserved permit from 1906 is an official form, the required data are filled in with a pen and in the calligraphy of an ancient scribe. The line for the applicant's name and address reads the manufacturer Laurin and Klement.

The power source and engine system are stated as: ''Two-cylinder four-stroke petrol engine, located in the front of the cart''. Paragraph (d) is interesting, specifying the power train as internal combustion and explosive, steam and electric. Steam propulsion was still common at that time, while electric propulsion was as relevant as it is today. For steam propulsion a description of the steam generating plant is given, for electric propulsion a description of the batteries is given. In the case of internal combustion and explosive engines, the cooling and ignition equipment is described.

Voituretta is also described in detail by the Power Transfers and the Controller's Device, which states: ''By the slip-out clutch, the transmission and the cardan on the rear axle gimbal. 3 speeds, reverse. Direction control by handwheel." You would search in vain for references to tire size, fuel consumption or emissions in this document. The tyres are referred to as the document as a coating of tires, without specifying their size.

The permit includes a detailed technical drawing of the vehicle. According to the stamp attached, we know that the official fee was two crowns. The document is stamped at the end with the stamp of the C. A K. governorship in the Kingdom of Bohemia.

"Today, every new type of car must go through a homologation process, which is a verification of compliance with legislative regulations related mainly to safety, emissions and other requirements for individual vehicle systems. Homologation starts with about sixty components, for which the manufacturer is responsible together with technical development. However, this is only the base of the pyramid. This is followed by testing of the entire vehicle, where compliance with approximately sixty other regulations for vehicle systems such as brakes, steering, assistance systems and others is verified. These system approvals then flow into the so-called pan-European approval, where you obtain a vehicle type certificate. Such a document can be up to 200 pages long, but partial system approvals, for example for emissions, can contain hundreds of pages more. Each vehicle is then issued a COC document (Certificate of Conformity), which is effectively its birth certificate and contains dozens of data necessary for its registration"
Lukáš Novotný, Homologation of the whole car

Shine a flame, pour sand

As well as the process of approval for operation, the operation of the car has also changed significantly. Modern cars mainly use LED headlights and lamps. Voituretta's acetylene lantern, also called a carbide lamp, is far from a modern headlight. It is a burner that burns acetylene and the resulting flame through a mirror only illuminates the space. The light intensity function is regulated by the size of the flame. In addition to motor vehicles and bicycles, you would also find this type of lighting in households at the time, and speleologists, for example, would attach burners to their belts or helmets. Electric lighting came into use in the early 1920s.

Another interesting feature related to the operation of the car concerns uphill driving with reduced adhesion. Today, we no longer recognize an experienced driver by pouring sand into the conical clutch if it slips when driving uphill.

The first car

By 1904, Laurin & Klement was already an established and award-winning manufacturer of bicycles and motorcycles, including several racing successes. It was the ninth year of the brand, and for the first-round anniversary, Václavs Laurin and Klement were preparing to expand the model range with the first two-track vehicle, thus marking the start of automobile production in Mladá Boleslav that continues to this day.

The idea of switching from one track to two did not come out of the blue. A vehicle resembling an automobile had already been seen here as early as 1901, for example. The quadricycle with a steering wheel instead of handlebars was one of the development stages of the forthcoming automobile. The first vehicle associated with the automobile was presented to the public at the motor show in Prague's Industrial Palace in April 1905, when a V-twin engine with an output of 6 hp for the upcoming car was exhibited on a pedestal. However, most sources state that the Voiturette A had a declared output of 7 hp.

The motoring weekly Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung introduced readers to the new car for the first time on Sunday, October 29th, 1905. In the winter of the same year, on 27th December, the weekly Sport a hry also introduced Voituretta to Czech readers, with the car even dominating the cover page. Right at the beginning of the following year, on 18th January 1906, Laurin Klement Voituretta A received official permission to operate.

Voiturette A in short

Thanks to its excellent price/performance ratio, the Voituretta became a hit in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire not long after its introduction. Despite its modest performance, the car reached speeds of up to 40 km/h. By the end of the debut year, the more powerful Voiturette B version with a 14-stroke engine and 9 hp was added to the range. By July 1907, demand had already exceeded production capacity. The later C variant already offered a two-litre engine with 12 hp and had a 700 mm longer wheelbase. An army ambulance and a taxi were also built in Mladá Boleslav based on the "C". The model range continued to expand, and just two years after the homologation of the Type A, what is probably the first in-line eight-cylinder engine in Central Europe was produced in Mladá Boleslav - the Type FF, which was created by combining two four-cylinder Type F.