SKODA'S TROVE OF HIDDEN TREASURE

The depository of cars secreted away at Skoda’s museum is a remarkable cache of the brand’s classics

- Will Rimell

How much more time have you got?" asks Michal Velebný, Skoda Depository's " head honcho, while we stare at a near-perfect light-green 110 L Rallye that has just arrived from a life in Cyprus. An intriguing question, and one to which I already know the answer as I look at the Czech Republic-based Skoda rep staring both at his watch and my way. "About five, maybe 10 minutes," I lie - but it's a fib I would not long regret.

Velebný ushers us out of his workshop and guides us through the underbelly of Skoda's treasure-filled Mladá Boleslav museum - which, in the building of the car maker's old factory, houses more than 300 cars and pre-Skoda Laurin & Klement bikes - to where a large wooden door stands. A padlock is opened and we enter a vast room of scattered metal, representing the 118-year history of the Czech brand. This is a room not many, bar select staff, set foot in. Not even the flush delegates get a look in here. The dust backs that up.

"Sorry for the mess," apologises Velebný, while pointing to a half-restored 1960s Formula 3 car and a covered-up, chrome grille-clad Popular Monte Carlo. Where we are standing is one of many rooms that make up Skoda's depository, a collection of unique, classic and rare gems collected by the Czech manufacturer. There are almost 250 cars housed within the museum (that number doesn't include the vehicles on show in the main building), either polished up and on display in the prototypes and sports cars depository or wherever they can fit in the old museum and its outbuildings. So big is the collection that a further 80 cars are also stored off-site.