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MOTORING


Developing Skoda’s SUV offering


Kodiak – an island – the site of the first European (Russian) settlement in Alaska in 1784.


Kodiaq – sounds like Kodiak but is actually the latest SUV from Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG). It wears a Skoda badge.


Nick Jones put one through its paces.


Readers of a certain age will remember the days before digital photography. Back then, one of the biggest names in the film business was Kodak – which was what developed in my mind when I saw the name of Skoda’s latest SUV offering, the Kodiaq. But that was in an era when Skoda was a quirky


Czechoslovakian car company making cheap rear- engined runabouts. It was also when jokes about Skoda cars were


plentiful – what do you call a Skoda with twin exhausts... a wheelbarrow, what do you call a Skoda with a sunroof… a skip. There were many more. And back then, cars had names that meant


something such as Rapid (Skoda), Allegro (Austin), Vitesse (Triumph), Galaxy (Ford). The days of joking about Skoda are long gone. And


so, sadly, it seems, are many of those evocative names. The trend nowadays at VAG seems to be to pick an


obscure word and adapt it. Take the recently featured Bentley Bentayga which is


named after a mountain on Grand Canaria. And Seat’s Ateca is named after a Spanish municipality. Both Seat and Bentley are VAG siblings, by the way, so this trend for naming cars after large, immobile items is obviously a corporate decision. That said, it’s not a new phenomenon. VW’s early


Polo saloon was called the Derby, but that could have been named after the Epsom or Kentucky horse races rather than the city.


56 business network June 2017 Enough nostalgia – VAG has a strong track record


in the SUV sector but until now the biggest to wear the Skoda badge was the smaller, boxy but hugely popular Yeti. One of the criticisms levelled at the Yeti, and all


Skodas, was that it was never available as a seven- seater. Well, the Kodiaq fixes that glitch. It does have a


seven-seat option and will, therefore, appeal to school- runners who, as all commuters know, need to drive off road and on to pavements with alarming frequency. Depending on the outcome of recently hyped clean


air campaigns, it’s possible the 2.0-litre TDI engine will be the most popular power unit picked by Kodiaq residents, sorry, owners as it will offer 113, 147 or 187bhp (115, 150 and 190PS). But there are 1.4-litre and 2.0-litre TSI petrol units also available. On vehicles of this size, fuel economy is often the


deciding factor for buyers and the diesel will return an average 50+mpg and kick out about 133 g/km of CO2. The 1.4 TSI 125PS variant manages 46 mpg and 142g/km. Possibly of more interest than the engines on offer


will be the newly-developed seven-speed dual-clutch auto gearbox, an option to the standard six-speed manual with some variants. An optional ‘Driving Mode Select’ system enables the


driver to tweak throttle response, steering feel and auto gearshift timings, plus on 4x4 versions there’s a ‘Snow’ setting that optimises all options for off-road use.


FACTFILE


MODEL Skoda Kodiaq 2.0-TDI 4X4


PRICE From £21,495 - £32,795


PERFORMANCE Top Speed: 124mph 0-60 mph: 9.5 seconds


CO2 EMISSIONS 144g/km (manual)


FUEL CONSUMPTION 52.3mpg


‘Possibly of more interest than the engines on offer will be the newly- developed seven- speed dual-clutch auto gearbox’


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