Introduction

This chapter analyses the relationship of the largest Czechoslovak automobile company, Škoda Auto, with its dealers in the neutral countries in the years from 1948 to 1964.

The takeover by the Czechoslovak Communist Party in February 1948 and the rising tensions of the emerging Cold War isolated the Czechoslovak manufacturer from the other European and global producers. This translated into a wholesale shift of the commercial, financial and technical relationships that Škoda had originally established, resulting in a redirection of the export of its motor vehicles towards the Soviet Union and the CMEA countries.

Nonetheless, behind the Iron Curtain, Škoda technicians continued jealously to preserve their own technological ‘know-how’, acquired before 1949 and for the most part foreign to the Soviet industrial paradigm. In the light of this, this chapter argues that the technical and commercial relationships maintained by Škoda with its dealers in the neutral countries – in particular Finland, Switzerland, Austria and Sweden – during the first and second five-year plans, played an important role in stimulating and directing the modernization of Czechoslovak automobile production.

From this perspective, the letters of grievance received by Škoda and Motokov – the state monopoly in charge of exporting automotive products – from their Austrian, Scandinavian and Finnish partners are examined. In the late 1950s, these letters, pointing out defects and bottlenecks of both Škoda production processes and products, seem to have been used by the technicians responsible for the Czechoslovak motor vehicle industry as a valid learning tool.