Upper Middle Petrol Head:

According to Wikipedia, the Octavia got its name as the eighth model that Czech automaker Skoda ever produced.  However, it appears to have been a popular nameplate and one that's been resurrected fairly recently, as this early Octavia - built at some time during a production run spanning 1959 to 1971 - clearly demonstrates, as it bears no aesthetic, mechanical or other tangible link to the contemporary VW-based version. I initially thought that the car may have been Simca-based but no amount of Googling or Wiki-research was able to confirm this, so it would appear to be an unadulterated product of Czechoslovakia.  Its charming but somewhat anachronistic appearance may be explained by that country's membership of the Eastern Bloc from 1948 to 1989, neatly book-ending the original Octavia's production run, and mirroring the styling and development of many Soviet era vehicles like the East Germany's Trabant and Wartburg - neither of which could reasonably be described as ...

This isn't the YouTube debut that I was hoping for, but - as the popular and axiomatic A-F saying goes - it is what it is!  And what  https://youtu.be/TgoYyGUR_rM   is, to be precise, is a video demonstrating P3P's blown head gasket and not the custom extractors that I was hoping to write about. The extractors - built by Kevin at Kingborough Exhaust - look like this, by the way: And now that I can't drive my car, let alone appreciate Kevin's first-rate handiwork, I look like this: U M P H (upperemiddlepetrolhead.blogspot.com.au.) iPhone images and video.