If you know Skoda best as that Czech manufacturer of very sensible people carriers, it’s time to think again. These images show the VW-owned carmaker's latest project: a radical electric-powered motorcycle that, frankly, will look like nothing else on the road. Or would if it actually got built on a production line and sold to the likes of you and me. Which sadly - for the moment - it won’t. The story of the Slavia B Concept could not be more fascinating though.
Designer is Romain Bucaille, usually hard at work imagining the exterior of Skoda road cars, adding the occasional subtle flourish to what motoring writers are generally agreed is one of the most sensible range of vehicles on the market. With the sci-fi lines and bold colourway of the Slavia B, Bucaille has gone rather beyond the sensible, reaching back into the marque’s history to look forward to a future design language.
Inspiration is from Skoda’s motorcycle-manufacturing years. The original Slavia B was a bicycle-based 240 cc single cylinder machine introduced when Skoda was known by its original name: Laurin & Klement. Five hundred and forty units - a respectable output at the time - were made between 1899 and 1904. Top speed was a mighty 25 mph. One example famously was the only motorcycle to finish the gruelling 1901 Paris to Berlin race. Designer Bucaille took a long look at the original drawings, and drew a straight horizontal line - that defined the frame of the original, and defines the Slavia B Concept.
Slavia B Concept: An architectural approach
“It had a very distinctive form,” Bucaille explains of the 1899 Slavia B, "the frame wrapped around the engine, protected it from below, and dipped lower than the rest of the structure.” This architectural approach informs the concept. Except that where the engine might be is an empty space, so the Laurin & Klement logo seems to hang in the air.
Leather tool bag - essential for long distance races 125 years ago - is recreated here. Saddle leather matches the tool bag, and you’ll be sitting cantilevered over the rear wheel. "The seat is designed to look like it’s floating,” says Romaine Bucaille, "disconnected from the body of the bike."
Front section of the Slavia B Concept pays homage to the engineering of Václav Laurin, pioneering at the time. A bold vertical line delineates boundary between front and rear sections. Equally bold green is taken from the Skoda logo. There’s only one option in terms of how you’ll be sitting on the Slavia B Concept and that’s in a head down race-ready profile.
Want one? Skoda underline that there is no prospect of expanding their line-up of oh-so-sensible motor cars to include futuristic electric motorcycles. But then, back in 1899 it might have seemed unlikely that the pioneering maker of what was essentially a motorised bicycle would become a worldwide four-wheel automobile manufacturer. Visit to your Skoda dealer? We hear they serve excellent coffee.
Next up: 10 of the best electric motorcycle brands.
