Photo: Shifttech France
For most fans of the Volkswagen Group, the Skoda Superb is a bigger Octavia with better leather, and an Audi S4 Avant is the devil's family car.
But we've just noticed that fresh tuning opportunities have opened up in Superb land. I'm referring to this particular wagon that has received 353 PS from a tuning shop in Belgium.
It's not particularly cool tuning, just a remap of the engine and some dyno work. But have you ever seen a Superb with as much power as the Audi S4? It's been made possible by the arrival of the 2.0 TSI under the hood of the car.
The official power rating of this unit is 280 PS and 350 Nm, but we know it's the same engine from the Golf R and the Audi S3, just tuned to be more reliable. In the Superb, the 2.0 TSI replaces the old V6. It comes standard with a DSG gearbox, and 4x4, so powering to 100 km/h takes only 6 seconds.
We doubt that increasing the power has boosted the acceleration by that much, but the top speed should exceed 260 km/h if un-restricted. The torque is pretty impressive as well. These modern TSI engines are amazing, considering that the 4.2-liter V8 in the RS4 makes only 430 Nm.
So in a way, forced induction has more than doubled the size of the engine. By comparison, the 2.0 TSI from about a decade ago is almost laughable, producing only 280 Nm of torque.
But do numbers alone make a car cool? We'd argue that in the case of the Superb, the answer is no. Sure, it's fast, but not necessarily cool or fun. Our favorite Skoda-based tuning project is the Yeti fitted with the 2.5-liter turbo engine from an RS3. There's also a twin-engined Octavia somewhere in Europe which we never got to talk about. And while we are on the subject, those little Fabia RS 1.9 TDIs are cool. Sure, they roll a lot of coal, but they are also unique.
It's not particularly cool tuning, just a remap of the engine and some dyno work. But have you ever seen a Superb with as much power as the Audi S4? It's been made possible by the arrival of the 2.0 TSI under the hood of the car.
The official power rating of this unit is 280 PS and 350 Nm, but we know it's the same engine from the Golf R and the Audi S3, just tuned to be more reliable. In the Superb, the 2.0 TSI replaces the old V6. It comes standard with a DSG gearbox, and 4x4, so powering to 100 km/h takes only 6 seconds.
We doubt that increasing the power has boosted the acceleration by that much, but the top speed should exceed 260 km/h if un-restricted. The torque is pretty impressive as well. These modern TSI engines are amazing, considering that the 4.2-liter V8 in the RS4 makes only 430 Nm.
So in a way, forced induction has more than doubled the size of the engine. By comparison, the 2.0 TSI from about a decade ago is almost laughable, producing only 280 Nm of torque.
But do numbers alone make a car cool? We'd argue that in the case of the Superb, the answer is no. Sure, it's fast, but not necessarily cool or fun. Our favorite Skoda-based tuning project is the Yeti fitted with the 2.5-liter turbo engine from an RS3. There's also a twin-engined Octavia somewhere in Europe which we never got to talk about. And while we are on the subject, those little Fabia RS 1.9 TDIs are cool. Sure, they roll a lot of coal, but they are also unique.
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