Skoda Rapid Round the World: the 1936 Drive and Other Expeditions

The Rapid behind the journeys

The Rapid was Skoda's mid-size car of the mid-1930s, placed between the small Popular and the large Superb. It was built in Mladá Boleslav by ASAP, the car company of the Škoda Works group. Its technical history, from the Typ 901 of 1935 to the overhead-valve Typ 922, is covered on our page about the pre-war Skoda Rapid and its backbone chassis.

The old version of this page dated a 1.6-litre engine with 42 hp to 1936 and gave about 600 sales. German Wikipedia puts the overhead-valve engine in 1938 and records 579 of these cars up to 1942, which matches the old figure of "about 600" but not its date.

Why Skoda sent its cars on long journeys

In the 1930s Czechoslovak car makers competed hard for a small home market and for export sales. A long, well-reported journey was cheap advertising. It showed that a car built in Mladá Boleslav could survive deserts, mountains and poor roads, and newspapers followed each stage.

Skoda backed these trips with money or cars. For the Arctic journey of 1936 the company gave the crew 20,000 crowns as "a subsidy for a promotional drive". Its museum still keeps records and photographs of the expeditions, and Skoda's own archive is the main source for the figures below.

Around the world in 97 days

Břetislav Jan Procházka (1897–1971) was a Prague entrepreneur and an experienced traveller. He led the expedition, and Jindřich Kubias (1909–1967) was his co-driver and navigator. They left Prague's Old Town Square on 25 April 1936 in a standard Rapid with a slightly modified chassis.

The route ran through Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, then across the Soviet Union to Baku on the Caspian Sea. After a sea crossing, a sandstorm in Iran cost the crew valuable time. From Quetta, now in Pakistan, they drove to Bombay in three days to catch a ferry to Ceylon.

The next stages took them through Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. A ship carried the car to Kobe in Japan and then, via Honolulu, to San Francisco. From there the Rapid crossed the United States to New York, sailed to Cherbourg and returned through Paris and Nuremberg. It reached Prague at 11:55 on 1 August 1936.

The crossing from San Francisco to New York was the highlight. The two men covered 5,300 km in 100 hours and 55 minutes, beating the existing record for the route by more than nine hours. By our calculation, that is an average of about 52.5 km/h, day and night, on 1930s roads.

The numbers behind the world tour

Skoda's figure of 10.2 l/100 km equals about 23 mpg in US units, which you can check with the fuel economy converter. By our calculation, the crew spent less than half of the 97 days driving: 44 days, or 45 %. A direct conversion of 1936 crowns into euros would mean little, so the cost is best read against the 20,000-crown subsidy for the Arctic trip. To price a long drive in a modern car, try the fuel cost calculator.

The old version of this page gave 27,000 km and 98 days. Skoda's own account of the journey, published for its 80th anniversary, gives 27,700 km and 97 days, so those figures are used here.

Beyond the Arctic Circle and to the Berlin Olympics

The second famous Rapid journey of 1936 began on 25 June. Its driver and owner was Vladimír Štůla, a 23-year-old law student. His crew were Bohumír Pokorný, who acted as treasurer, photographer and tailor, Bohumil Zahradník, in charge of lodging, and Ladislav Týra, navigator, mechanic and cameraman.

On 11 July they crossed the Arctic Circle after an 868 km stage, the longest of the trip. Their northernmost point was the port of Liinakhamari, then part of Finland. From Tornio they joined the star rally to the Olympic Games in Berlin, which started on 16 July with 154 cars. The Rapid carried start number 43.

The rules allowed crews to register at one of 60 checkpoints in Germany each day, each at least 250 km from the previous one. The team reached the AVUS track in Berlin with 4,368 points. At first they were placed second, but they were later declared winners and received gold medals. Skoda's general manager, Karel Hrdlička, sent letters of thanks, and Skoda's archive mentions postage stamps showing the crew.

Across Africa with the Škulina couple

Stanislav Škulina (1908–1961) and his wife Maria chose the longest route of all. Skoda's archive says they left in June 1936 in a Rapid saloon for a two-year tour of Africa. They drove from Dakar to the Equator, then south to Johannesburg and the Cape of Good Hope.

The couple returned through Egypt and across the Mediterranean and reached Prague on 18 May 1938. Their total distance was 52,000 km. One section of Skoda's text and a Radio Prague article date the African safari to 1934, while the main account gives June 1936, so the start year should be treated with care.

Three Rapid journeys compared

Compared with the world tour, the African trip was nearly twice as long, 52,000 km against 27,700 km, and took about seven times as many days. The Arctic journey was the shortest of the three but the only one that ended with a competition win.

Other Skoda journeys of the 1930s

The Rapid was not the first Skoda sent abroad. In 1934 a group of Popular cars drove about 15,000 km from Prague to Calcutta. In 1936 the travel writer František Alexander Elstner and his wife Eva covered about 25,000 km across the United States, Mexico and Spain in a Popular 1.0 with 16 kW (21 hp).

The old version of this page listed Elstner among famous Rapid owners. Skoda's records show him in the smaller Popular, and the other names in that list could not be confirmed, so they are not repeated here. Hausman and Pohl took a Popular Sport to second place in their class at the 1936 Monte Carlo Rally.

War, the end of the first Rapid and the name's return

Production continued after war broke out in 1939, under German occupation. German Wikipedia records 579 overhead-valve Rapids from 1938 to 1942 and a further 21 cars from 1945 to 1947. A Rapid-named 2.2-litre six-cylinder car was also built in very small numbers in the early 1940s; the old version of this page gave 34 cars and 44 kW (60 PS), which we could not confirm.

The name returned in 1984 on a rear-engined coupé, described in our page on the Rapid 120, 130, 135 and 136. It came back again in 2012 on a family liftback, the Rapid NH. The wider company story is told in our history of Skoda.

Our view: what the expeditions mean for collectors

For a collector, a pre-war Rapid with a documented link to one of these journeys would be a museum piece. Even ordinary Rapids gain interest from the same legend, because the journeys are part of how the model is remembered. Anyone looking at a Rapid today should check the type number and engine first, then the condition of the central tube. Other cars of the period are listed in our 1930s classics section, and every model is on the Skoda catalogue page.