Road Test
Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI Elegance
Test date 29 July 2008
Price as tested £21,510
For Clever boot/hatch design, relaxed ride, huge rear seat space
AgainstGrumbly diesel engine, awkward styling, electrical glitches on test car
We’ve been saying for years that a Skoda is a smart buy, that it occupies the ground of classless, good-value quality Volkswagen once called its own. But a Skoda luxury car? That’s a bit harder to credit, especially when it’s named so seemingly naïvely as the Superb.
That name was also met with wry amusement when the previous Superb was launched in 2001. But Skoda had the last laugh, for that Superb, based on the previous Passat with its wheelbase stretched for space, was a better car than the VW and rode British roads much more serenely.
Still, if Skoda’s hefty new car is to gain credibility, then, it needs a USP. That’ll be the Twindoor, in which the bootlid either hinges open conventionally or can stay rigidly attached to the rear window as the whole assembly opens to reveal a vast load bay.
This, together with enormous rear legroom, make the Superb unique in its sector, if indeed it occupies any known sector.
Under the skin it’s broadly a stretched Volkswagen Passat, with some ‘modules’ taken from the Octavia/Golf, and is even offered with a turbocharged 1.4-litre engine at the bottom of the range, as well as a 3.6-litre V6 with four-wheel drive at the top. We’re testing the 138bhp 2.0-litre turbodiesel in Elegance trim.
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