I wrote an article yesterday that used an interesting car in the lead image, and a number of readers noted it. It’s hard not to notice it—it’s quite a striking-looking car. It’s a Škoda 110 Super Sport, a 1971 Škoda concept car based on a rear-engined Škoda rally car, but with vastly more dramatic style. But the car is actually better known for an acting role, when it played a bloodthirsty vampire car in the 1982 Czech horror film, Ferat Vampire. It’s as good as you think it is, whether your idea of “good” is ironic or not.
Before we get to the vampire version of the car, let’s look at how the 110 Super Sport started life. The car used the drivetrain from Škoda’s 110L Rally car, which in turn was based on Škoda’s workhorse, three-box, rear-engined 100/110 sedan.
In Rally spec, the 1.1-liter engine made a respectable for the era 73-ish horsepower, and when transplanted into the 110 Super Sport, the drivetrain was flipped to provide a mid-engine layout, and the dowdy bodywork was completely replaced with a very futuristic, wedge-shaped design, complete with six pop-up headlights, a raising canopy for entry and exit, and a gleefully bonkers sixteen taillights.
I mean, look at this:
Fantastic.
Now, early-’70s Czechoslovakia wasn’t really the time or place to be building a low-volume dramatic-looking sports car, so the 110 Super Sport remained a one-off prototype, put in storage and likely occasionally admired by the odd Škoda employee who wanted to do some daydreaming.
About a decade later, though, the Super Sport was brought back from the dead, literally and figuratively, because it was selected to be a movie star, playing the role of a vampire car in the movie Ferat Vampire.
Any acting role requires special costuming, andtransforming the gleamingly futuristic white 110 Super Sport into the evil Ferat Vampire RSR took some doing.
The car was given a black paintjob with red pinstriping, the sextet of pop-up headlights were replaced with a more conventional, ‘80s-rectilinear face, and all those taillights were replaced with a pair from the upcoming Škoda 120, with some gold BBS wheels to top it all off.
For a car designed in the early 1970s, the transition to a modern (you know, for the ‘80s) look was pulled off remarkably well, and the thing had the sort of imposing, malevolent presence you’d expect from an evil vampire car that drank blood.
How evil was it? Well, here’s a clip:
Yikes! What the hell is going on in that engine? Now, I don’t know Czech, but based on some things I’ve read and this organ-filled poster, I think the Ferat Motors company (the name is from Nosferatu, you see) was experimenting with some manner of biological engine:
This is a concept I’ve actually explored a bit on here, and I can absolutely confirm that, yes, such a thing would be horrifying, whether it consumed blood or just cat food or something.
Here’s a longer clip, with more shots of the car, along with a whole lot more great Eastern Bloc-iron:
The film is also notable because it features actress Dagmar Havlová, who later went on to be the first lady of the Czech Republic, as you probably know, she was married to Václav Havel.
It’s interesting how often the concept of cars running on blood as a horror movie conceit seems to come up; there was one called, cleverly, Blood Car,and just a few years back, Blood Drive. For some reason, people keep coming back to the blood-as-fuel thing.
Blood-chugging or not, this is a really strikingly-designed concept car, and it’s amazing to see it have a second life as a horror-movie villain, an honor that far too few forgotten concept cars ever get.
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