Modified Skoda Kodiaq RS Makes 290 HP, 580 Nm of Torque and Really Moves

You see, when people think of a performance SUV, a powerful V6 or V8 comes to mind. Sure, this is a crossover, but Ford still found a way to fit a 2.7-liter V6 to its Edge ST, which is similarly sized. But the mightiest Kodiaq is fitted with a 2-liter diesel engine, like your average family car.

To spice things up a little, the Czech automaker did opt for a twin-turbo setup, which delivers 240 HP and 500 Nm out of the box. Unless we're mistaken, that's the most you can expect from a stock 2-liter diesel, tied with a Jaguar engine.

But there's a number of auto shops that can get you more juice. Dieselpower Race Engineering is one of them. We've featured their work before, the last one being the Audi SQ7 TDI. They also did a number of projects with the old 1.9 TDI.

After dyno testing and re-mapping, the BiTDI now delivers 290 HP and 580 Nm of torque, which is 40 HP and 80 Nm more than stock. The power number comes pretty close to the Cupra Ateca and Audi SQ2, but the torque is something else; it's on the level of six-cylinder diesels.

And you know what Uncle Ben says, with great power comes the need to do an acceleration test. Or is that the rice guy? In any case, the tuners didn't strap any timing gear on, but the frame-by-frame look shows a stock Kodiaq RS is doing 89 km/h when the modded one reaches 100 km/h. So the standard sprint time should be similar to a Golf GTI now. The performance gains can also be seen at the top end.

We don't know if there are that many Skoda owners who would risk the reliability of their expensive engines, but this fat boy is begging to be turned into a Sunday drag racer.