Skoda Makes The Citigo Exciting With Electric Buggy Conversion

Skodas are not the most exciting cars out there and this is perhaps even truer when talking about the company's smallest car. The Citigo is essentially a Czech take on the VW up! and SEAT Mii without anything particularly interesting that would lure you into buying one. In a bid to make the A-segment vehicle more appealing, 22 students from Skoda's vocational school have transformed the little Citigo into something quite delightful.

It's called the Element and takes the shape of a one-off buggy conversion ditching the combustion engine to adopt an all-electric powertrain, though technical specifications have not been provided. No less than 1,500 hours have been invested into chopping off the Citigo's roof, getting rid of the rear seats, placing a lid on the trunk, and doing the EV conversion. The entire side profile has been subjected to numerous changes and it seems the tiny trunk is now rocking a custom sound system.

This is technically Skoda's second full electric concept, after the Vision E unveiled in April at Auto Shanghai. While the latter has a shot of evolving into some sort of a production model some years from now, the Element will remain purely a concept for obvious reasons.

The Element is far from being Skoda's first project of this kind as in recent years the automaker from Mladá Boleslav has created multiple one-off projects. Take the very same Citigo for example. In 2014, the CitiJet pictured above was unveiled at Wörthersee as an "expressively designed city-cabriolet." A year later, the Fabia pickup dubbed Funstar came out and was followed in 2016 by the unique Rapid coupe aka Atero.

While all of these concepts are nice and all, a better way to spice up Skoda's image would be through more performance models. The VW-owned marque is on the right track by preparing a Kodiaq RS, but it would likely be more effective to bring back the beloved Fabia RS. While the supermini is not going to get the sporty treatment, the flagship Superb might receive the RS badge in the future to sit on top of the current 280-hp model.