Give in to temptation: buy a Laurin & Klement

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It's well-known that God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden but, frustratingly, the Bible makes no mention of exactly what car He drove them in. Genesis and all other written accounts suggest that He was in a Fury, and while the thought of Him smoking tyres in one of the spectacular Virgil Exner-penned Plymouths is certainly awe-inspiring, this photograph is the first we have seen connecting Laurin & Klement with the Fall of Man.

Unfortunately, we don't have any background information for the photograph, but we presume that Eve had to find some way of earning a living after being ejected from Paradise, which must be how she ended up working as a motor-show glamour girl.

The car, however, is less of a mystery. Seen at what appears to be a motor show of the late 1970s or early 1980s, the Škoda signs are a pretty obvious giveaway that we're looking at a Laurin & Klement. Revealing its first car on 29th October 1905, the Bohemian firm of Laurin & Klement had already made its name as a very early maker of motorcycles, so it followed that it's first four-wheeled products should be light voiturettes. Its early products were well-made, highly acclaimed and successful in competitions, but in 1925 Laurin & Klement was taken over by the armaments maker Škoda Works, and the rest is history.

Its first model, the Voiturette A seen here, was officially approved for road use in January 1906, but its public launch did not take place until the Prague Motor Show three months later, on 15th April. Powered by a 7hp, 1,005cc V-twin with overhead inlet valves, it was a reasonably modern car which relied on shaft-drive to the rear wheels, although chain-drive could be ordered by request. Though the car here is a little sparsely equipped, lighting and weather equipment were available as options.

We can appreciate the rationale behind employing the original temptress to help sell cars, but Eve's presence here is entirely superfluous. We're sold on the strength of the Laurin & Klement's pretty looks and specifications alone, and if we were wealthy Bohemians in 1907, we wouldn't have thought twice about adding a Voiturette A to our stable.

Incidentally, of the 44 Voiturette As produced between 1905 and 1907, there are said to be five survivors. This 1906 example now resides in a Czech private collection but another may be seen on permanent display at the Škoda Museum in Mladá Boleslav, and a very similar 1906 Voiturette B resides in the National Technical Museum in Prague.

Words: Zack Stiling; photograph: Stiling Collection
 

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