First Drive: Skoda Superb Estate

Updated

People do snigger at the idea of a Skoda called Superb (the name actually harks back to a pre-war model never sold in Anglo-Saxon markets), but Skoda is very bullish about this car. While the proposition of the Superb may look simple – an executive-sized car being sold for less than a Mondeo or Insignia, the truth is a bit more complex. As the Koreans and Japanese have proved, there is no point selling an executive-sized car if it looks and feels like an overgrown Toyota Corolla, no matter how cheap the price. Kia once offered the Magentis at £9999 and a fat lot of good it did them. The Superb is different: from the outside it looks as convincing as an Audi or BMW and the quality of the interior is absolutely first class. We jumped out of a BMW Z4 and into the Superb and the latter had noticeably better fit and finish. Indeed, only Audis have better finished interiors than this car, and then only fractionally.

So it looks the part and it feels the part, but does it deliver on the road? The chassis and engines come from the collective parts bin of VW and Audi, and Skoda is normally pretty adept at combining them into a convincing whole. We tried the full range of engines, starting with the 1.4 TSI. Now, the idea of a 1400 cc engine in a car almost the size of an Audi A6 Avant may seem absurd, but this one confounds expectations. With its turbocharged and supercharged engine, it has the power (125 bhp) and torque of a 2.0 litre petrol without the thirst.

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