Car manufacturers these days are all quite serious. They rarely make cars for the heck of it, instead every model has to have an identifiable customer base or at least will be appealing enough to enough people in order to make the car a financial success.
This paring back of models reveals truly what modern car buyers or leasers want: a premium feel, loads of bad touchscreens inside and most likely an SUV/Crossover ride height. For the last 15 years the car market has been homing in on this blueprint for sales success. And whilst some have identified this from the start, such as the Nissan Qashqai, other brands such as Mercedes have conceived tens of new models designed to fill every niche possible, only to then pare back their range, retaining only the models that actually sell in volume.
As a result, cars are becoming more homogenous and more boring.
Kerbside doesn’t like boring cars, so today we’re looking to celebrate one of the strangest little cars that ever turned wheels on the road: the Skoda Felicia Fun. Curiously the standard Felicia hatchback is a boring car. It’s one of those little cars that began life in the 1990s and was eventually culled in the early 2000s. For some reason this was a particularly bad time to be a car. Budgets were tight, people often bought cars outright, so there were lots of cheap cars about and the cheap cars were, for the most part, nasty.
But we aren’t here to muse about the standard Felicia. No, we’re here to talk about the ‘lifestyle’ edition: the Felicia Fun.
All it takes is one look at the Felicia Fun and you either love it or you hate it. It is so unashamedly strange, and it is all the better for it. The yellow paint, the ridiculous body shape, the extended plastic body trim. It all combines to make the Felicia Fun just this strange little car, but a car that doesn’t take itself seriously.
The Felicia Fun is essentially a Skoda Felicia pickup, with the utilitarianism turned down, and the sunny seaside vibes turned up.
The only paint option on the Felicia Fun was a bright yellow, so they aren’t hard to spot. On that note, whilst the Felicia Fun was sold in the UK, they are very rare, but if you hop on a plane and go somewhere hot in Europe, I guarantee you will see one minding its own business in some small town square.
What makes this especially amusing is that most of the Felicia Funs that have lived in sunny Southern Europe have spent a little too much time in the sun, and their bright yellow paint often looks a little more faded instead evoking more of a ‘winter sun’ aesthetic.
The added plastic trim on the Felicia Fun – which includes extended front bumpers; wheel arch extensions; full body-length sideskirts and a step-down rear bumper – all work to again reiterate that this isn’t a car that takes itself seriously. Those plastic trim additions are also painted a slightly more caramel shade of yellow, giving the whole car this kind of mismatched two-tone appearance, and for those Felicia Funs that have spent the last two decades cooking in the sun, they look a bit like old men that live by the seaside in Mediterranean countries; too much time in the sun, but they don’t regret a minute of it.
As the Felicia Fun is based off the Felicia pickup, but with a little more pizzaz, I prefer to think of it as Europe’s Ute. Yes, the Felicia pickup could be classified the same way, but the Felicia pickup is too geared towards load lugging, and it lacks a kind of charm that Ute’s are known for. The Felicia Fun is more “hey guys I’m a fun little car, and I just also happen to have a pickup bed!”.
At the rear of the Felicia Fun is this stupendous little spoiler. Is it a spoiler? Probably not, but that’s what it looks like and it gives the Felicia Fun that extra visual treat. Rock on, little dude.
You could seriously sneak the Felicia Fun onto the set of the original Jurassic Park, paint it in the OG Jurassic Park livery used on the Ford Rangers in the first film and no-one would even notice. It is that kind of car, where the people driving it know what they’re doing and they need something equally ballsy to drive around in.
Don’t believe me that the Felicia Fun would work in a Jurassic safari setting? The Felicia Fun also came with a tonneau rear cover for full protection from the elements.
How about them apples?
Kerbside 