CARS I PEOPLE I SCOOPS I MOTORSPORT I ANALYSIS – THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
Skoda has a simple yet hugely ambitious target for its new Kodiaq: it should be the very best family car.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
You can almost hear the evil laughter echoing from the Skoda facilities in Mladá Boleslav. From the designers, crafting new versions of familiar Skoda details like a place to clip your parking ticket on the windscreen and a slot for an ice scraper in the fuel filler cap. From the engineers, stretching a shared VW Group platform to its absolute limit. And from the boardroom, as executives set Skoda on a course for huge commercial success by creating the family car to end all family cars.
That’s pretty much how the outgoing Kodiaq is already regarded. Launched in 2017, it soon became Skoda’s biggest-selling SUV. It won awards. It toppled fierce rivals in CAR group tests. It became the pragmatic choice for any family.
Not satisfied with all that, Skoda is determined to make the Mk2 even better and even more successful, despite the SUV market being more bloated with choice than ever.
Skoda’s approach involves keeping one eye on the way rivals have upped their game in terms of luxury and technology, while not losing sight of Skoda’s long-standing embrace of value and simplicity. The show car you see photographed here demonstrates the delicate balance required. Finished in Bronx Bronze, with aerodynamic wheel inserts, a single light bar running through the grille and blue-tinted jewellery in the headlights, it seems pretty fancy. But it’s still sculpted using Skoda’s time-honoured clean, crisp lines and stark angles.
Karl Neuhold, Skoda’s head of exterior design, knows the average Kodiaq buyer is different to the average Enyaq buyer, for example. So, yes, there are some trinkets on the new Kodiaq. But they’re a little more understated compared to the brand’s EV. At the rear, the lenses look to be one piece, for example, but the lights are in fact separate.
‘We didn’t want to have a single light band,’ says Neuhold, ‘because I think for us, everyone’s doing [a single light band] at the moment. It’s fashionable right now but too trendy for us.’ Given its family orientation, the Kodiaq lives or dies on its interior. The Mk1 ruled the pack primarily on the strength of its functional and spacious cockpit, with plenty of room for up to seven occupants and a good amount of luggage. This time, the same general principles apply, but with even more thought put into the details of the new layout.
Unique spin on underpinnings shared across VW Group
Naturally, the technology available has been upgraded hugely; every Kodiaq uses a digital instrument cluster and features a 13-inch screen using the VW Gro
