[dagw]

that I never heard of before?

Outside the eastern block countries, Skoda was the punchline of jokes and generally considered one of the worst cars you could buy up until the mid-late 90's when they became the Volkswagen budget brand. It's really only since the early 2000's that Skoda became a brand people wouldn't be embarrassed on being seen in.

[smarinov]

This explains it. I come from a former Eastern Bloc country and Škoda was well established here well before the former regime overtook power after a short occupation by the Red army. Also, they were definitely not unknown in (parts of) Germany from very early on, although I guess not as prominent as in countries who didn't build their own cars, for obvious reasons.

I never knew that until very recently they had such a bad reputation in other Western countries. Thanks for clearing this up for me!

[wazoox]

Actually that's mostly the Lada that were the subject of many jokes, such as "how do you double the value of a Lada in 5 minutes? By filling up". "What's a Lada on the top of a hill? a miracle. several Lada on a hill? a weird place for a Lada factory. lots of Ladas on a hill? A landfill" etc.

[dagw]

While Lada was probably the most popular source of car jokes I certainly also heard every Lada joke also told with/about Skoda.