Refreshed small SUV gets tweaked engines and a tech injection while maintaining a common-sense theme On sale April Price from £24,030
Neil Winn neil.winn@haymarket.com
FIRST DRIVE
‘VORSPRUNG DURCH TECHNIK’, ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’, ‘The Power of Dreams’. These are all evocative advertising taglines, but none is as fitting as Skoda’s ‘Simply Clever’. It’s more than just a slogan; it really is baked into every car that the Czech brand builds.
Take the facelifted Kamiq we’re testing here. On top of thoughtful touches you’d find in the outgoing car, such as the parking ticket holder on the windscreen, the ice scraper in the filler flap and the 12V socket in the boot, there’s now a floor-mounted storage box (for use by rear seat occupants) that snaps onto the back of the centre console, and even an air-conditioned wireless charger to help your mobile phone stay cool during top-ups.
The updated car is much nicer to sit in, too. You’ll notice pleasantly soft materials and recycled fabrics in places where you’d previously have found hard, scratchy plastics. An 8.0in digital instrument panel is now standard, with a larger and configurable 10.3in one fitted on SE L trim and above. As before, though, you don’t get the raised perch that many SUV buyers love; the driver’s seat isn’t much higher than that of a family hatchback.
The infotainment touchscreen has grown from 8.0in to 8.25in, while SE L models and above still come with a larger 9.2in screen with wireless smartphone mirroring. The system is simple and relatively easy to navigate, but it’s a shame that there are no physical shortcut buttons. However, it’s good that the updated car retains physical knobs to operate the two-zone climate control system that’s standard across the range; adjusting the interior temperature or fan speed on the go is a breeze.
The petrol-only engine line-up consists of two 1.0-litre units (TSI 95 and TSI 116) and a 1.5-litre (TSI 150). We’ve tried the middle engine, which has been tweaked for an extra 5bhp over the pre-facelifted model (for a total of 114bhp).
Even if you compared the two engines back to back, you’d struggle to notice much of a difference. Not that this is a criticism; the 1.0 TSI 110 was our favourite engine choice for the Kamiq previously, and the 1.0 TSI 116 has simply taken its mantle.
With a respectable 0-62mph time of 9.7sec, it’s mo
