The best-preserved Favorit in the world

Thirty years ago, Derek Slack Motors began it’s partnership with Škoda, the same year, a proud new owner drove her brand new Škoda Favorit home from a showroom in Athens. It was the first time in ages that the driver had been behind the wheel. She drove home without a hitch. But after she had parked the car in a communal garage near her home, she simply decided that driving wasn’t for her.

So for the next three decades the white Favorit’s milage read 23.7 miles. That is how an underground garage in an Athens suburb came to house perhaps the best-preserved Škoda Favorit in the world. Today the car is back in the country where it was made. In Czechia. And it belongs to someone who has a lot in common with the Škoda brand.

Racing driver Jiří Mičánek Junior. He was just seven years old when the Favorit set off on its one and only journey. But he had motor racing blood in his veins. His father Jiří Mičánek Senior had driven single-seater racing cars in prestigious formula series competitions in the then Czechoslovakia and eastern Europe, most of them with Škoda engines. He drove them to ten Czechoslovak championship titles both in circuit races and hillclimb events.

“I, too, started out in Škoda-engined formula series cars. My parents had a Favorit for everyday driving and dad used them in his circuit racing school at the start of the 1990s,” Jiří says, explaining why he decided to bid for the “Greek” Favorit. 

Two months later, the Škoda Favorit arrived in a shipping container in Frankfurt, where its new owner collected it. With a tow rope, of course, because a gem like this shouldn’t be worn out by long journeys. And the new owner doesn’t really plan to drive it much, just to keep it in its pristine state for as long as possible.

Having spent thirty years in an underground garage, the car genuinely looks like it just rolled off the production line. It even has the protective plastic covers on the seats; the engine compartment has completely intact paper labels; and the snow-white paint on the wheel arches shows that the Favorit drove the 23.7 miles from showroom to garage on a dry road.

So what does the new owner plan to do with this exceptionally well-preserved car? Jiří Mičánek is clear – he’s going to keep it in its original condition, which means not driving it. It will be a historic memento of his racing family and their connection with the Škoda brand in the future, one of a pair. “When my dad was getting rid of the Favorits from his racing school, I bought one from him out of nostalgia. It’s completely worn out, of course, but I want to restore it and then display both cars together – the racer and the runabout,” says Jiří Mičánek Jr.