Thirty-five years of promoting Škoda cars
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Pavla Líhařová was born Pavla Hofmanová on 11 August 1946 in Brno, where her father Miroslav Hofman worked temporarily as a stainless steel expert at Zbrojovka. Her mother Jarmila was a housewife. In 1952, the family moved back to Prague, where both parents were from, and Pavla started primary school at Strossmayerovo Square. She studied applied graphics at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Žižkov and after graduation she joined the Textil Central Bohemia Region company. At the age of twenty-two, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, Pavla witnessed the shooting of civilian boys by occupying soldiers in Prague-Podolí; two of them reportedly died. In 1969, she married Eduard Líhař and they moved to Mladá Boleslav, where her husband was from. Here she joined the photo department in Česana, the automobile development centre within AZNP Mladá Boleslav. After the birth of her children (a son in 1970 and a daughter in 1974) and two maternity leaves, she permanently worked in the promotion department, where she was mainly involved in creating promotional materials for Škoda cars within the Czechoslovak market. After privatisation in 1991, when Škoda became part of the Volkswagen Group, the work in promotion became much more ambitious. Pavla Líhařová also had the opportunity to go to rallies with Škoda Motorsport drivers as a photographer and her images are still an important part of Škoda’s image archive. She retired in 2004 and in 2024 was living in Mladá Boleslav.
