Sadly it is goodbye Skoda Yeti RIP

THE mighty Volkswagen Group managed to accomplish one of the motor industry's major success stories by developing Skoda from a joke company into one of the world's leading and most respected automobile manufacturers.

For when VW took over Skoda in 1991 the company in the Czech Republic had become a joke after the communist regime had virtually ruined a highly respected car manufacturer following the Second World War with some very inferior cars.

But now VW has just announced that Skoda is celebrating the production of its 15th millionth vehicle since the beginning of its partnership with Volkswagen and that it has transformed Skoda into an established high volume manufacturer that is represented in over 100 markets across the world and last year achieved a new sales record of 1,126,500 deliveries.

Just after taking over Skoda Volkswagen built a new main manufacturing plant at Mlada Boleslav near Prague which I visited soon after it opened and found it to be an extremely impressive factory but at that time I never imagined that eventually VW would develop Skoda into one of the world's top car makers.