The Skoda Mountiaq Is A Winch-Toting Pickup Built By Students

Skoda has revealed a bright orange pickup with a winch, a light bar and massive off-road tyres. Sadly, it’s not a new production model: it’s the fruit of a project carried out by Skoda apprentices.

This snorkel-packing, bullbar-nosed punk cousin of the painfully straight-laced Kodiaq rides some 10cm higher than the tallest production version (the Scout) thanks to vast Falken Wildpeak A/T tyres over 17-inch Rockstar II wheels bedecked with Skoda Academy centre caps.

Below its grille, framed by the animal-unfriendly bullbar and lovely Sunset Orange paintwork, is a winch designed to haul what’s being dubbed the Mountiaq out of any sticky situation in which it might find itself.

The Mountiaq measures a millimetre under five metres long, 5mm over two metres wide and stands 1710mm tall. Under the bonnet is a 187bhp TSI turbocharged petrol engine, but don’t expect speed: this one-off pickup weighs a portly 2450kg.

To build it, Skoda’s students spent time reinforcing the chassis in the right places before removing half of the roof, joining the remainder to a rear cab panel and fitting new windows. The doors were shortened and widened to suit the wider body, then the metal-based load bay was kitted out with a suite of under-floor storage cupboards for your lifestyle bits and bobs.

The driver can have their tunes as loud as the paintwork thanks to the addition of a 2000W amplifier and a 2000W subwoofer. If that’s not blingy enough you’ll find lighting effects in the front grille, the bonnet logo and engine bay. The front doors even project a Skoda logo down onto the floor when open.

There’s an integrated refrigerator and two walkie-talkies, which are both nice features to have if you’re spending a day away from it all. They’ve stopped short of going full USA, though, as there’s nowhere to put an assault rifle.

It took the team of junior staffers over 2000 hours to make, with one of the hardest challenges said to be making a fully-functional integrated tailgate. A more fun part of the assignment was developing the new Mountiaq logo: a Skoda SUV’s front profile against a mountain range. It’s stitched in orange into this concept’s leather upholstery, to match the orange contrasting stitching.

We’ve got to be honest: we kinda like it. We’ve no idea whether it would really stand up to the abuse working pickups actually get (and we’re not likely to find out), but we like it anyway.