With the help of the Volkswagen Group, Skoda has turned out to be quite an important player in the automotive industry. The Czech automaker delivered more than 760,000 cars last year and aims to double its annual sales to 1.5 million by 2018. But it’s not only about sales as Skoda’s German parent company is also planning to further boost the Czech brand’s image.

In celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the vRS (in the UK, simply RS for the rest of Europe) performance badge, Skoda will compete in the famous Bonneville Speed Week in August (13-20) with a specially modified Octavia vRS saloon. Skoda’s goal is to break the magic 200mph (320+ km/h) barrier for the first time in the company’s history.

To do so, over the past few months the Czech brand’s UK technical team at Milton Keynes has been working together with performance software and tuning house REVO Technik on a special Octavia vRS.

Based on the latest production model, the car with which Skoda will compete at the Bonneville Salt Flats rides almost 80mm closer to the ground and features a new sub-frame that houses a race prepared intercooler.

While it retains the production model’s 2.0-litre four-cylinder TSI petrol unit, engineers replaced the standard turbo with a more advanced unit from Garret producing 26-28 PSI of boost pressure and modified the engine to run on a high-octane race fuel (with water methanol mix) instead of unleaded petrol. The result is a blistering output of up to 600-horsepower and 450Nm (331.9 lb-ft) of peak torque.

The Octavia vRS also gets a standard suite of safety features such as means a reinforced roll cage, parachute, fire extinguishers and window cage.

Skoda will enter the car in the ‘2.0-litre production car’ category and will race it over a nine-mile straight, which includes a timed mile in the middle of the course.

For more details on the mechanical hardware of the race model and how it compares to the standard Octavia vRS, check out the specification sheet below.

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