I BROKE the most valuable Skoda in the world (it's insured for £250,000) before it had moved a single inch. Talk about feeling a proper idiot.

Still, at least I'd managed to sit in the cockpit of the car; a gorgeous looking open two seater designed more for racing lightness than six-footers with size 12 feet.

And while a pair of cheerful mechanics worked away under the bonnet to reattach the throttle cable dislodged by an over-enthusiastic right foot prod I had time to glance over this miniature masterpiece, from a chassis made of masses of tubes to a skimpy body looking like a 1950's schoolboy doodle of the perfect racing car.

For anyone who thinks Skoda has only ever made road cars with an emphasis on value, here is evidence that deep in the psyche of the Czech company once burned a desire to win on the track.

So, back in 1957 it unleashed a couple of fibreglass bodied roadsters in a racing programme that took them to modest successes on the other side of what was then a very heavy Iron Curtain.

Now, the one remaining Spider in running condition (and fresh from a £30,000 engine rebuild in the UK, where it now lives) is being used to punch home the message that Skoda has been around a long time, in one form or another.

Since 1895, to be precise, when a couple of keen cyclists began designing and building two-wheelers called Slavias, adding motors four years later and becoming Laurin and Klement (their surnames). The first car appeared in the early 1900s and then, in a merger in 1925, Skoda arrived.

Older drivers will recall model names like Felicia and Favorit, attached to machines that lacked the panache of Western rivals but were cheap to buy and run and tough with it.

Then, in 1991 Skoda became the fourth brand in the Volkswagen group and it began quickly to lose the budget tag, replaced with cars that happily pinched bits from dearer VWs to produce machines that were now properly modern and good value.

But back to the Skoda Spider, now mended and revving its little 1,098cc engine in prospect of a visit to the modest race track provided for us at Bicester Heritage, carved from 348 acres of a former 1920's RAF bomber station.

Now, if barely a litre sounds puny it's worth pointing out that the engine bears little relation to anything you would have found in a roadgoing Skoda of the time - as its 92 horsepower output and the Spider's 125mph top speed testify.

It's also light; at 550 kilos much less than the weight of a Harley Davidson motorbike with chunky rider aboard.

So, the car will fly if provoked. Which, with rain falling in enthusiastic amounts and the track awash, I was not keen to do. Especially as my spectacles lacked windscreen wipers and my big feet found it easier to operate two pedals at once rather than one.

Oh, and however hard you pressed the middle pedal, the drum brakes stayed asleep, only deigning to flicker an eyebrow of interest as your right thigh began to quiver with the effort of application.

It did make lovely noises, though, as I crunched up and down the gears (housed in a gearbox between the rear wheels) and persuaded the rev counter to flicker round to a figure that gave a gentle taste of the Spider's potential.

The steering was a positive delight, with the thin, string wrapped wheel feeding back an accurate description of the tarmac below.

Which must have been welcome when the Spider was used in anger more than half a century ago. No seatbelts, of course. No roll cage, no bodywork (to speak of) and almost no brakes.

Miroslav Fousek and Jaroslav Bobek - the two men who took the pair of Spiders to a one-two in Leningrad in 1962, I salute you.