The new Škoda Auto Fabia Motorsport Edition. A car built to celebrate 125 years of motorsport heritage by delivering roughly the same power output as an enthusiastic office photocopier.

This, apparently, is the ultimate tribute to rally dominance. The road-going embodiment of decades of engineering excellence. The spiritual cousin to the mighty Fabia RS Rally2. And what do you get?

177 horsepower.

One hundred and seventy-seven.

That’s not a motorsport number. That’s the sort of figure you get when a German hatchback brochure says “entry-level petrol, but quite punchy around town.”

And the torque? 250 Nm. Which sounds impressive until you realise modern diesel washing machines probably produce something similar while spinning duvet covers.

But don’t worry, because it has decals.

Lots of decals.

Nothing says “born from rallying” quite like stickers and a black roof. Somewhere in the Czech Republic, a genuine Rally2 engineer is probably staring silently out of a window while marketing people apply carbon-look trim to dashboards with the intensity of NASA technicians preparing a moon landing.

And because this is a Motorsport Edition, Škoda has thoughtfully included a numbered plaque, special floor mats, driving gloves, and — this is real — a piece of roll cage from an actual rally car.

Which is brilliant, because when you’re being overtaken by a rep in a diesel Octavia on the motorway, you can at least hold a small fragment of authentic motorsport history and remember what true speed once looked like.

To be fair, the gearbox has “higher shift points,” which suggests the engineers discovered the revolutionary concept of allowing the engine to continue revving for another 400 rpm before changing gear. Formula 1 will be trembling.

And the styling? Lowered suspension, smoked alloys, twin exhausts. It looks ready to attack a gravel stage at 120 mph. In reality it’ll attack a retail park speed bump at cautious suburban velocity while the DSG decides whether today is a “performance” day or a “protect the warranty” day.

The funniest part is that this thing exists in a world where hot hatchbacks casually produce 300 horsepower, all-wheel drive, launch control, and enough torque to rearrange nearby tectonic plates.

Meanwhile the Fabia Motorsport Edition arrives like:
“Good news everyone, we’ve extracted an extra 27 horsepower and added commemorative stitching.”

Still, only 125 will be made, which is probably sensible. Any more than that and someone might accidentally compare it to an actual performance car.