History: glitz, glamour and victorious rallies

› Special-edition model of the POPULAR in 1936 was the first ŠKODA to bear the MONTE CARLO name
› ŠKODA celebrated major victories at the ‘Monte’ with the 130 RS and the FABIA
› Since 2011, ŠKODA’s MONTE CARLO models have embodied a sporty lifestyle

Mladá Boleslav, 15 February 2022 – The name Monte Carlo does not just refer to the famous rally, but also to sporty ŠKODA models. Since 2011, the MONTE CARLO variants have been a reminder of the Czech brand’s great sporting successes at the ‘Monte’. In 1936, the ŠKODA POPULAR took second place here and was subsequently the first model to be given the evocative MONTE CARLO name. This was followed by the legendary ŠKODA 130 RS’s 1-2 class finish in 1977, which the ŠKODA FABIA Rally2 repeated 40 years later.

2021 saw ŠKODA celebrate 120 years of motorsport involvement. A motorcycle developed by the company’s founders Václav Laurin and Václav Klement represented the first significant milestone when it competed in the Paris–Berlin long-distance race in 1901. Having made its inaugural appearance at the second-ever Monte Carlo Rally in 1912, the brand went on to record its first major success at the legendary event in 1936 when the ŠKODA POPULAR finished second in the category of cars with a capacity of up to 1,500 cc. In light of this success, ŠKODA then launched a special edition and produced 70 POPULAR MONTE CARLOs.

Following the first class victories of the original OCTAVIA in the 1960s, the legendary ŠKODA 130 RS gave the Czech car manufacturer its first ‘Monte’ double victory in the category of cars with a capacity up to 1,300 cc in 1977. This success was repeated in the 1990s by the FAVORIT and the FELICIA, before the great rally career of the ŠKODA FABIA began. In 2003, the FABIA WRC replaced the OCTAVIA WRC, with which ŠKODA first entered the top category of the 1999 World Rally Championship. The ŠKODA FABIA SUPER 2000 followed in 2009 and won more than 50 national and international titles. Based on the third-generation FABIA, the Rally2 became the most successful rally car in the world, notching up over 1,250 victories and numerous titles around the globe. In 2022, the further developed FABIA Rally2 evo celebrated its fourth ŠKODA triumph within just six years in the WRC2 category and the brand’s 15^th class win overall. Now, the rally car based on the current, fourth-generation FABIA is getting ready to line up.

In 2011 – exactly 75 years after the special-edition ŠKODA POPULAR was launched – the MONTE CARLO models celebrated their comeback. The second-generation FABIA was the brand’s first production car to be given the famous name that has since come to characterise the dynamic variants in ŠKODA’s line-up of compact cars. In 2015, the MONTE CARLO edition of the third-generation FABIA followed, and ŠKODA also added this trim level to other model ranges: the ŠKODA CITIGO MONTE CARLO (available until 2019), the ŠKODA YETI MONTE CARLO (until 2017) and two ŠKODA RAPID MONTE CARLOs (until 2018). They were succeeded by the ŠKODA SCALA MONTE CARLO and the ŠKODA KAMIQ MONTE CARLO at the end of 2019.