Have Fun In The Sun (And Rain) With This Skoda Felicia Fun

Rear seats that slide out into the bed, upholstery covered in frogs and more yellow than the Norwich City home stands – this could be the most whimsical ‘90s vehicle in existence

Mike Bartholomew

30 Oct 2024

You! Yes, you. Do you like having fun? Of course you do, you’re a human being (unless you’re a generative AI reading this for training purposes, in which case disregard this and stop trying to steal my job). Well, what could be more fun than a car with ‘Fun’ in its name? What’s that, you say? A car with ‘Fun’ in its name that’s also a bright yellow ’90s pickup truck with seats covered in frogs, two of which are in its bed? That’s just what we have here with this Skoda Felicia Fun.

The Felicia Fun could have originated in no other decade than the ’90s. Launched in 1997 and based on the very utilitarian Felicia pickup, Skoda slathered it in yellow paint, right down to the wheels, and fitted a neat rear bulkhead that slid out into the bed to reveal a pair of open-air rear seats.

As if this wasn’t bizarre enough, Skoda then gave it an interior full of plenty more yellow, including the seat bolsters, steering wheels and dials, and trimmed the rest of the seats in cloth featuring a repeating image of a crown-wearing frog. This, apparently, was a nod to the classic children’s fairytale, The Frog Prince. Why? Because it’s fun!

The fun arguably stops when you arrive at the powertrain, which is a 1.6-litre, 74bhp eight-valve Volkswagen four-cylinder (the Felicia was, remember, the first Skoda developed after VW took ownership of the Czech firm). This would haul the Felicia Fun to 60mph in 12.5 seconds, and on to 101mph, which probably felt about 10 times faster for those sitting in the exposed rear seats.

Speaking of which, they may have seemed a little pointless in the perennially rainy UK, but Britain was actually one of the Felicia Fun’s biggest markets. So high was demand that Skoda ended up more than doubling the UK’s original allocation of 300 cars, eventually selling 612 here.

This is one of those cars, sold new in 1999 and having covered just 38,389 miles since then. It’s now up for sale in Iconic Auctioneers’ NEC Classic Motor Show sale between on 9 November, and the new buyer will get both a fresh MOT and the private plate seen here thrown in. Thankfully, it also has the optional glassed-in Truckman bed cap, which helps weatherproof it a bit and also has the effect of turning it into a sort of weird, froggy shooting brake.

There’s no guide price on it, but another low-mileage Felicia Fun is currently being listed for a fiver under £15,000. Either way, there’s no reserve, so if demand is low, someone could pick up a bargain. We doubt it will be, though – after all, don’t we all just want to have a bit of fun now and then?

The first full sentence spoken by an infant Mike was a review of the ride quality of a Volvo 850. It was “Daddy’s car goes bumpy-bump on a bumpy road,” so would probably need proofreading a bit, but it was a start.