Like the sedan and hatchback, the Superb Estate comes in S, SE and Elegance models, gets your choice of gas or diesel engines, a manual transmission or a DSG. The rear hatch has a power open option with load and road illumination as well as a detachable flashlight built right in. As always, there's no chance of this latest Euro-wagon hitting US shores.

[AdsOfTheWorld via AnimalNewYork]

Carbon fiber is so unnecessarily posh. As shown by the seller of this awesome racing car, welded steel is the way to go. This car is for sale in the town of Záhony, right on the border of Hungary and Ukraine, and while you might be tempted to hit the gallery right away, do stay on for the seller’s wonderful description. I am not a translator of enough finesse to capture the full beauty of the original Hungarian but I hope you get the picture:

For sale is the custom built racing car pictured!

Its size and dimensions resemble original Formula One cars. The engine and the transmission are from a 1.0-liter Škoda 100. Engine sound can be set between normal and sporty. Bucket seat 4–6 inches from the tarmac. Up front is a 12V headlight and four parking lights. It is intended for hobby use on a closed circuit.

Experience the fantastic feeling of driving a race car!

The future owner should prepare for doing a new paintjob and fitting four new wide tires. With a little work this can be turned into a fabulous machine

Before you dismiss that 1.0-liter engine, remember that for five years between 1961 and 1965, Formula One cars had engines of but 1.5 liters. If they were good enough for Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jimmy Clark and John Surtees to win world championships, a thousand cc’s of Škoda power should be enough for you, shouldn’t it?

Convinced? Hit this link and have $1300 ready.

Hat tip to Kari. Photo Credit: Expressz.hu

We'd really like to go with a couple of the German Cheesecake Hell Machines for this, but the shipping costs to your hobo jungle just puts the price tag too far out of reach. Despair not, though; we've got a pair of budget classics for you, and you get to choose between Malaise Era British build quality and Warsaw Pact parts availability. If you're willing to substitute optimism sweat for sanity a fat bankroll, you could never, ever get one of these hair shirts fine European machines back on the road!

Have you ever gone Lotus shopping? Man, they sure ain't cheap! That's because serious car freaks know that nothing handles like a Lotus, particularly one that's equipped with a nervous high-revvin' Torqueless Wonder engine. However, a true bargain hunter knows where to go for a genuine Lotus at a Festiva price: hurricane country! Head on down to Houston with 1,250 Washingtons and this slightly flood-damaged 1980 Lotus Elite (go here if the ad disappears) could be yours. That mean ol' Hurricane Ike was rough on vehicles (we saw some real flood horror stories on the track at the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons last year), but how bad could a little water damage be when you're looking at a no-frills sports car such as the Elite? Fix some electrical bits here, maybe wring out some mildew-enhanced carpeting there, and you'll be several years and vast quantities of cash just a few turns of the wrench away from driving your Elite. Not only that, you get an alleged two grand in "undamaged by Ike" new parts in the deal!

1948: An Iron Curtain descends over much of Europe, yet those plucky Czechs somehow manage to shove a few Skodas under the curtain and across the Atlantic. 1951: This '48 Škoda 1101 (go here if the ad disappears) breaks down, its owner is hauled before Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committe for attempting to purchase replacement parts from Czechoslavakia, and the car is parked in the woods near Gig Harbor, Washington. We can't swear for sure that the story went just like that, but the car's appearance certainly suggests a lengthy campout in the damp forests of Washington state. According to the seller, it has "semaphor blinkers," which is pretty neat, and it looks like the majority of parts are still there; as an added bonus, you can impress your computer-geek stoner friends by informing them that 1101 is the binary for 13. Dude! Imagine this Škoda jacked up over a solid front axle and equipped with the "KGB Special" V8 out of the GAZ-23 Volga sedan- you'd have yourself a Warsaw Pact GAZser!

Based on the Volkswagen A04 platform also underpinning the VW Polo and SEAT Ibiza, the Skoda Fabia five-door is a fairly conservative car in production form, but here it gets the faux off-roader treatment; tough lower cladding, higher ground clearance, and a much bigger, more aggressive set of wheels and tires. Nothing revolutionary here, but it is a pretty decent looking concept, even without all the concept car design gimmicks. [Autoblog.it]

A police officer in the village of Limbach-Oberfrohna in eastern Germany was on patrol when he witnessed a man and his magic speeding Skoda lose control in a turn, drive up an embankment and fly across the street into the roof of a small church. Emergency crews were on the scene within minutes but it took firefighters equipped with a ladder truck to get the seriously injured driver out of the little Skoda. It took a crew equipped with a crane to get the vehicle out of the roof.

If it turns out the man was drunk, he'll likely face a prison sentence and years of overcompensating when the collection plate comes around at church. (Hat tip to Franzouse!)

[BBC News]

Today we're going to consider a car that's been generating tips for about a year now; the seller just won't give up, and we've lost count of the number of times readers have tipped us on it. It's an undeniably awesome machine: a Czech station wagon! It's in very nice condition and includes all the original manuals, keys, the works. The seller had it priced much higher for quite a while, but now the price has come down to $5,000 (Bring A Trailer has done a good job of tracking this car's asking prices since it's been on sale). It costs about $2,000 to get a car shipped over from the Czech Republic- I know, because I'm considering doing so myself- and you could probably get a nice Octavia Combi over there for a couple grand… but this one is already DMV-approved and its papers are in order, thus enabling you to avoid an intensely Czech experience during the registration process. What do you think?
[Craigslist San Francisco, go here if the ad disappears]

(Peugeot 404) Spotted in a supermarket car park in downtown Tunis, it looked like it had drive across the Sahara just to get there.
It’s a Peugeot 404 Station Wagon, a 1.9 diesel (I tested the spillage from the fuel filler).
Apparently, it’s very difficult to date Peugeots in North Africa because they could be original French cars or African built cars. If this is a French built car, the bumper and grille mean it’s from the late 60s but if it’s an African car, it could be from as late as 1980 with the same bumper, though the grille would be different. The mirrors, if original, mean it’s an African car but it’s common to swap them onto older French cars because they’re better than the original items.
I met a couple of Ukranian car dealers who seemed to know how to tell the difference. Nice guys, obviously crooked though.

(Peugeot 104) Spotted in the quaint chop shop district of north Tunis.
A friend of mine at high school had one of these, I’m sure it was the same colour, though in much better condition than this example.
The chickens were sheltering under it, though not in it, when I saw it.
I was amazed that so much of the car was in such bad shape but, overall, it wasn’t bad and has a definite charm about it.

(Peugeot 504amino) Spotted in the chop-shop district of north Tunis, Tunisia.
It’s a Peugeot 504 pickup, a real workhorse. The guy working on it assured me that it was running the original diesel engine and transmission, though I saw it had a five speed ‘box which wasn’t available until the late 70s in the saloons and much later in commercials. He didn’t know the year it was built as it wasn’t his pickup but he has done work on it for over ten years and he showed me some of the modifications he’s made, like enlarging the pedals to accommodate work boots and making the pickup bed stronger.
I tried to buy one of these years ago and discovered that they were homologated for Group B rallying before it was abolished. They are still available, brand new, in Nigeria.

(Renault 21) Spotted in a residential area of Tunis adjacent to the motorway from the airport.
I saw it from the motorway and spent about an hour trying to get back to it. The owner was present but wary of me, though he was fine with me taking photos. He told me it had been in his family since new but that he didn’t like it much.
I’ve never seen a 12 in three door estate form before this, though I have seen three door vans and normal estate cars. This looks like a van with retro-fitted windows, probably at the same as the bad re-spray. The saloon and estate were common in the UK while I was growing up, I remember them usually being brown.
The interior was ultra basic, not really a pleasant place to be and the exterior looks like a deliberate attempt to make an ugly car.
I hate it but I somehow couldn’t drive past it without getting photos.

(Skoda) Spotted in various places around Tunis. It may look like it crashed half onto the paved area in front of the shops but I watched the owner park it carefully there before walking off.
It’s an early 70s Skoda, probably a 110. It’s the epitome of rear engined, rear drive, Czechoslovakian engineering from the 60s and 70s. This predates the awful reputation Skoda had in Europe before VW took them over in 1991. These cars had good rally success and Skoda continued that success into the 80s with the Estelle and Rapid, they won their class in the RAC rally for 17 years running.
This example is not rally champion material. I had to follow it at about 15 miles an hour for ages until it stopped and I got the photos. Pulling away from traffic lights, it was so slow that I thought about pushing gently from behind with my rented Renault to get it moving.

They made some wonderful cars in Czechoslovakia back in the day, but that darned ol' Iron Curtain kept all but a tiny handful of them from making their way to North America. Still, Skoda took an ill-advised shot at importing Felicias back in the early 60s, which means that you might be able to find an affordable one over here. As a matter of fact, you can get this convertible (go here if the ad disappears) for 500 bucks or best offer. How can you resist? The seller sums up the car quite aptly with this no-punctuation-needed statement: "basket case little rust mostly there what you see is what you get." See, it's mostly there! Just make a few calls to Prague and you'll have the missing stuff faster than a man can turn into a giant cockroach! And don't worry about the running condition of the Skoda engine, because it's already been proven that you can put an Audi V8 in the back! Yeah, there's rust... but how bad can it be?

You see quite a few garden-variety WW2 Jeeps just driving around these days, but what if you want one of the super-rare Ford GTB 1-1/2-ton trucks, popularly known as the Burma Jeep? Normally you'd have to pay boo-koo bucks for such a veteran, but we've got a line on this genuine Burma Jeep (go here if the ad disappears) for only $500. We'll readily admit that this truck has something of an oxidation problem, but we know you'll be as relentless as George S. Patton himself when it comes time to replace and/or fabricate the components that are too far gone to fix. Hey, there must be something on this vehicle that won't disintegrate into a cloud of red dust when you stare hard at it! The seller doesn't offer any description (other than "RARE!"), but it looks like an engine is visible behind the grille and you even get the axles. No sweat!

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FIVE euro-ncap STARS FOR THE NEW Superb

The new Škoda Superb has received five stars in independent crash tests performed by Euro-NCAP. One of the factors to have contributed to the highest possible rating is a knee airbag. Commenting on the new Škoda Superb, Euro-NCAP points out that the protection of the occupants' knees and thighs is excellent.

The Superb has achieved the highest possible scores also in side impact and pole impact simulations, receiving 35 points for the protection of adults and 40 points for the protection of children. The quality of pedestrian protection is very high, too.

"The new Superb has been developed to provide the occupants with maximum possible safety. The Euro-NCAP results confirm that we have managed to produce a top-quality vehicle in terms of performance, user comfort, as well as safety, one of the key aspects from the customer's perspective, and I am indeed very pleased about that", said Dr. Eckhard Scholz, Škoda Auto Board Member responsible for Technical Development.

Standard equipment for the new Superb includes seven airbags and other top-level safety elements, such as a new-generation chassis that is more rigid than that of the vehicle's predecessor and front seats optimised to protect the occupants from cervical spine injuries. Optional equipment includes two additional airbags, an adaptive front lighting system, and more. The new Superb will go on sale in the UK in September.

In addition to the diesel-sipping engine, the Superb also gets some tweaks to the nose to create a better airflow around the car and a suspension adjustment that lowers the car by about 15 mm. We're not sure what kind of improvements come from the addition of the models, but if it's necessary for the environment we're on board. [Skoda via CarScoop]

As far as we can tell, this feature is fairly unique as far as an application in a sedan (some SUVs have a similar system). This is the kind of thing we'd like to see on more non-Czech cars. [Source: Skoda]

Believe it or not ladies and gentlemen, they've even left the original 45hp engine in the rear to silently and swiftly power you to you next high-stakes livestock auction. Observe if you dare the invisible seams where skilled welders applied their trade. The deeply luxurious paint and stately flags really put a cherry on top, don't you think? We are truly jealous.

The second-generation VW Touareg, upcoming Tiguan and possibly the Passat Coupe are the VW variants that will get the RNS 510 30 gigabyte media and navigation system. [Crave]

Skoda Superb

Škoda Auto is presenting the first official photographs of the new Superb. Offering really generous space, the new Škoda Superb is a leader in its class (medium/upper medium class cars).

With 4,838 mm in length, 1,783 mm in width, 1,461 mm in height and a 2,761mm-long wheel base, the new Škoda Superb offers a number of smart technological solutions, including adaptive "look-round-corner" headlamps, a new electronic air conditioning system, an automatic parking assistant system, and more. As safety was one of the top priorities in developing the new vehicle, the new Superb has altogether nine airbags.

The new Škoda Superb will be available with three petrol and three diesel engines (77 - 191 kW) and with both manual and automatic transmission systems.

The new Škoda Superb will receive a world premiere at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show and will be manufactured in Škoda Auto's plant in Kvasiny. [Source: Skoda via World Car Fans]