Careful preparation
The pair started planning the road trip with their Favorits a long time ago, and preparations began around February 2022. Above all, this involved careful preparation of both cars. First, Wlodzimierz set about a renovation, or rather a major overhaul. The entire brake system was replaced, the sills needed repair and new bumpers were attached. Wlodzimierz did these mechanical jobs himself. The paintwork was taken care of by a professional painter.
The red Favorit was given a new brakes system.
Andrzej, though, painted his blue car himself. “It would have been too expensive otherwise,” he laughs. And we admire the work he did as an amateur. He really took pains and the result is worth it. Even the mechanical repairs on his blue car were done by Andrzej himself. As it turns out, this technical talent is in his genes. “My father had a motorcycle repair shop,” says Wlodzimierz.
Andrzej painted his blue Favorit himself – and what a good job he did!
He later became a professor of mechanical engineering and rector of the Warsaw University of Technology. “I still have some of the tools from my father’s workshop at home,” he smiles. Andrzej may have taken an economics degree with a later focus on transport, but he clearly has technical talent too. After all, the Favorit is not his only vintage car, though it’s his only Škoda. “I wanted to get a Škoda Rapid or 120 GLS, but they’re hard to find in Poland and they tend to be expensive,” he explains why he is sticking with the Favorit for now.
Andrzej Kurnik’s family travels in the blue Favorit.
When the two motoring enthusiasts knew that they wanted to pick up their certificates of origin in Mladá Boleslav with their cars, they did some digging together into the family’s motoring history and discovered other connections to the Mladá Boleslav car factory. Not only was there a Škoda 120 in the family before the Favorit, but there was also a connection to Laurin & Klement machines in the past. “My great-grandfather was one of the first people to ride a Laurin & Klement motorcycle in Sanok. We have a photo of him on a Slavia motorcycle at home,” Wlodzimierz boasts. Wlodzimierz, however, had to wait 67 years for his own connection to Mladá Boleslav when he became the happy owner of a Škoda Favorit. Andrzej didn’t have to wait so long, and now he’s thinking about his next Škoda. But this one’s more likely to be one of the brand’s modern models.