New Skoda Fabia Super 2000 given Carlos Sainz treatment

Skoda put its tarmac-meltingly hot 280bhp Fabia Super 2000 hatch in the racing hands of its tame racing driver to help conduct the car manufacturers test programme. Some say he knows two facts about badgers, and they’re both wrong, and that he gets terrible acne on his helmet. All we know is that he’s called Carlos Sainz, and he used to have rally cars named after him.

Ranked alongside child-birth, tattooing and enduring Radio 1’s Chris Moyles show, the pains of making Skoda a force to be reckoned with in the commercial arena was well documented until Volkswagen took up the then sour-tasting chalice. Conversely, Skoda’s pedigree in Rallying had never caused either manufacturer or fans any discomfort.

Recently, twice World Rally Championship garland-wearer Carlos Sainz strapped himself into the sweaty-confines of a flame-retardant cat suit and fur-lined race booties and clambered aboard a WRC-prepared Skoda Fabia Super 2000. Eager still to keep his cross-hand in on any motorsport stage, Sainz has already piloted the Volkswagen Race Touareg and all-new Scirocco at the Nurburgring 24-hour hitherto this point, whilst on the Volkswagen pay-roll as its ‘factory driver’. Nothing to do with fork lifts, everything to do with v.fast VW’s and family.

A galaxy of motorsport faces and household names like Jan Kopecky and Raimund Baumschlager have gathered at an Austrian test facility along with one of the bigger cheese’s at Volkswagen’s Motor Sport Department – Hans-Joachim Stuck, to watch Sainz thrash the mighty Fabia Super 2000 hatchback. And hope he didn’t mis-judge an apex and get the thing covered in grass stains. Or worse still, witness the Fabia going wheels up.

Not that it’s Carlos’ first foray into Skodadom, having being behind the wheel of a less potent Fabia at last years Shalymar Rally in his native country, Spain. Which he went and won.

"I have got to know the Škoda Fabia really well, and I can see a huge step forward as far as the development of the competition version is concerned", said Sainz, and authorized to take part in this test by Volkswagen Motor Sport Department Director Kris Nissen.

Based on the current generation Skoda Fabia, the Super 2000 is a 2.0-litre, four-wheel-driven 280bhp snorter that’s being fine-tuned, prior to submitting its entry forms for the FIA World Rally Championship and asking politely if it can ‘give it a go’.