When Petr Beneda drove his boxy antipodean ute onto the service station forecourt in the Czech town of Bakov nad Jizerou, the attendant already knew what it was. “Is that that farm vehicle from Australia or New Zealand?” he picked correctly, falling short of knowing the Trekka marque and that only its badge was made in Australia; the rest was made in Aotearoa.
That awareness highlights the extraordinary rise in prominence in the Czech Republic of a vehicle significantly forgotten and still mocked in the country that built it. Nearly six decades earlier, the Trekka first rolled off the assembly line in Ōtāhuhu, Auckland.
In December 1966, the Trekka became New Zealand’s first and only home-designed and mass-produced motor vehicle. A total of 2500 examples of it were built over six years. The boxy Trekka looked a bit like an undernourished Land Rover and featured a locally designed and built body fitted to the chassis and underpinnings of a Škoda Octavia.
A rough concept vehicle had been built by Palmerston North Škoda importer Phil Andrews. That was bought, along with the Škoda franchise, by Auckland car assembler Motor Holdings, which put it in production in Ōtāhuhu.
It was the ultimate expression of government policies to restrict imports through a comprehensive licensing system and to incentivise the local car assembly industry by loosening import restrictions for vehicles with a high local content, such as glass, upholstery, and so on.
It was the marriage of Kiwi industrial can-do with Cold War-era Czechoslovakia that lies behind the Trekka’s rise to fame in Škoda’s homeland over the past five years. Škoda, whose car-making reaches back to 1905, was first proud of and then indifferent to its 1960s and 70s foray into New Zealand, but in recent years has reconnected with that chapter in its history and its global public relations potential in the 21st century.
In 2018, Mladá Boleslav-based Škoda bought a restored Trekka from Ray Petty, an enthusiast in Western Australia – one of about 50 shipped from New Zealand in a short-lived export drive.
Petty’s fibreglass-canopied van ended up in Škoda’s factory museum, and a second example, restored locally by classic car specialist Jiři Valach, became the “live” Trekka, turning up at classic car exhibitions and events and driven by foreign media hosted by Škoda.
Petr Beneda joined the Trekka club having worked for Škoda in Australia for five years after the marque was relaunched in 2007 following a decades-long absence (Škoda was by then owned by the Volkswagen group). After he returned to Mladá Boleslav, a friend in Australia sent him a photo of a Trekka in Melbourne. Beneda did his research, bought the well-looked-after vehicle and shipped it to Europe. “Wherever they show up, people come and start to talk,” said Beneda.
Biennale blessing
The re-adoption by Škoda of its southern Pacific relative started with Venice’s 2003 Biennale art event. Representing New Zealand with Creative New Zealand backing was artist Michael Stevenson, with This is the Trekka, a multifaceted work with a restored Trekka at its centre. It told the politics-rich story of an agricultural nation at the bottom of the world trying to industrialise by linking up with communist-era Czechoslovakia.
“In Europe, the story of the Trekka was awakened because of this Venice Biennale,” says Vítězslav Kodym, Škoda’s head of global product communications. “From the beginning, we inside Škoda pushed this topic to have it onboard.”
A New Zealand connection at Škoda was part of that push. Michal Velebný heads the restoration workshop at the factory’s museum in Mladá Boleslav, and his grandfather Josef, a revered design engineer at the company, had spent 15 months in Ōtāhuhu helping to develop the Trekka.
“It was Michal Velebný who started to create some kind of story, and we sat together in 2014 saying let’s try to get a Trekka into the Czech Republic and incorporate it in PR activities,” says Kodym. In 2018, with the help of this writer, Velebný connected with West Australian Petty, who was trying to sell his restored Trekka, and it joined the factory’s museum collection.
Around the same time, Škoda launched the Kodiaq, its first foray into the burgeoning sport utility vehicle segment of the global car market. The Trekka found a new role as Škoda looked to promote its credentials as the SUV era blossomed.
“We have to be quite careful with this – saying this was the first SUV that Škoda produced – but we are always speaking about roots, first tries, even in the 60s,” says Kodym.
His deputy, Zdeněk Štěpánek, adds: “We use it as an example of how Škoda was able to cater to the different needs of different customers in different global regions.”
From Wānaka to China
To tell the story and grab global media interest, Škoda needed a Trekka it could borrow for test drives by journalists coming to try out the latest models. The solution was linking with Jiří Valach, who’d bought a uniquely Kiwi example that had been a familiar sight around Wānaka in the 1970s. Valach had restored the Trekka, retaining a host of customised modifications added by Wānaka contractor Roger Taylor. Taylor had added a sliding roof for hunting and a “snorkel” air intake to allow it to ford rivers while bush-bashing in the Matukituki Valley. Even an externally fixed spade was kept on the vehicle, which also appeared at big European classic car shows such as Techno-Classica in the German city of Essen.
While the museum Trekka has made static appearances, such as at an international media gathering at Škoda’s HQ in Mladá Boleslav, the ex-Roger Taylor one has been wowing visiting media from markets such as India and China, demonstrating global empathy.
At one event for Indian media, Valach put the Trekka through a rugged offroad course. “We put stickers on the Valach Trekka saying ‘Born in NZ with Škoda DNA’, which explains the story behind the car,” says Kodym.
Škoda’s promotion of the Trekka has run parallel to growing interest among Czech classic car collectors. As many as nine examples are now in Czech hands, some in private museums.
In a country of 10 million people, Škoda is its largest, proudest and longest-standing manufacturer, and Beneda says the interest in the Trekka reflects the deep ties that locals have with the company.
In New Zealand, where Škoda returned in 2003 as a prestige subsidiary of Germany’s Volkswagen, the quarter-century hiatus since its local heyday as one of the cheapest cars on the market has left the historical association with the Trekka on the sidelines.
The vehicle itself, a creation of protectionism, faded to black in 1972 as the New Zealand market opened, especially to a new generation of Japanese vans and utes.
Stevenson’s Europe-grabbing Venice work is now owned by Te Papa. A pre-production model Trekka and a flat-deck ute variant are the only other examples on public display, at Auckland’s Motat.
Others are held in private collections. Elsewhere in Aotearoa, several private owners have embarked on serious restorations as the Trekka makes its slow journey back into public awareness at home. l
Auckland journalist Todd Niall encountered the Trekka while making a radio documentary in 2001 about their history. He co-owns a low mileage, 1972 barn-find model.
