FIRST DRIVEOctavia feels classier and still excels at the practical side of life
John McIlroy John_McIlroy@autovia.co.uk@johnmcilroy
THE Skoda Octavia is known in the UK as a VW Golf and Ford Focus rival – but it’s actually a bigger seller as an estate on these shores, and overwhelmingly so across continental Europe. So the stakes are pretty high for this new facelifted version of the Skoda Octavia Estate.
The wagon gets the same basic upgrades as its hatchback cousin – which add up to a neat bit of restyling and some useful additions to the standard kit list. The new design extends to revised daytime-running lights and matrix-LED headlights, a more sophisticated front bumper with cleaner surfacing, new taillights complete with animated ‘welcome’ functionality and some fresh alloy wheels and colour options.
There’s a notable tweak in the Octavia engine line-up, where the previous three-cylinder 1.0-litre petrol motor has been dropped in favour of a slightly more powerful 1.5-litre four-cylinder unit. The new engine produces 114bhp and 220Nm of torque, and is available, depending on trim level, as a cheaper alternative to the usual 148bhp 1.5-litre motor.
Both of these engines get a six-speed manual gearbox as standard, but you can have them both with a seven-speed dual-clutch auto, too – and that version also comes with 48-volt mild-hybrid assistance to help improve fuel economy.
More significantly for the estate market, Skoda continues to offer the Octavia Estate with a couple of diesel options – a 2.0-litre motor in two states of tune, producing 114bhp and 148bhp. A six-speed manual is the standard gearbox on the lower-powered version, while the more potent configuration – the car we’re driving here – gets the seven-speed automatic, but does without the petrol’s hybrid tech. On the road, the 2.0 TDI does a terrific job of reminding you how effective a diesel powertrain can still be – deserving of far more sales, in fact, than it’s likely to get, given market trends. There’s more than 120Nm of additional torque here compared with the 1.5-litre 148bhp petrol, and even with the load bay relatively empty, you can certainly feel it. There’s more than enough shove from less than 1,500rpm and in general, you’re done and dusted, and shifting up to the next gear before 2,700rpm, with the minimum of fuss.
This, in turn, means that the gearbox is hopping around all over the place, but most of the time, it manages to per
