Skoda jumped the gun, previewing its two main debuts even before the Paris Motor Show began. We were there to check out the Kodiaq RS, and here's what we found out.
The first thing is that Skoda officials are really bad at English and numbers. Apparently, the Kodiaq RS has a "140 horsepower engine" and "14 years have passed since Skoda's legendary rally victory." Make that 240 and 40, and we'll be ok.
Second of all, even Skoda knows they didn't try very hard with this project, as the 2.0-liter turbo diesel "didn't need to be tuned further" to achieve the Nurburgring record, which nobody takes very seriously. The SUV needed 9 minutes and 29.84 seconds to complete a lap of the Green Hell.
That's about a minute and a half off the pace of a real hot hatch, which we associate the RS brand with. We bet there are other 7-seat SUVs that are even faster but never went for a record lap.
We might be looking at this project from a completely wrong angle. If you consider the Kodiaq to be a very nice Skoda SUV, then the RS is the nicest version of that. Likewise, the Octavia RS TDI is not faster than a base Octavia 1.8 TSI, but it's more desirable.
As we've discussed in our previous post, the RS body kit is quite subtle here. They basically just blacked out the upper grille, changed the lower one and included a bunch of elements from the Kodiaq SportLine. At least the rear exhaust features those trademark double mufflers, and they don't look face.
The unimpressive specs also include a 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) time of 7 seconds and a 220 kph (137 mph) top speed. You shouldn't even be drag racing a Clio RS. Standard kit will include Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) system bundling the Driving Mode Select, Alcantara seats, 20-inch wheels, LED headlights and a 7-speed DSG, so look for a starting price of around €45,000.
Second of all, even Skoda knows they didn't try very hard with this project, as the 2.0-liter turbo diesel "didn't need to be tuned further" to achieve the Nurburgring record, which nobody takes very seriously. The SUV needed 9 minutes and 29.84 seconds to complete a lap of the Green Hell.
That's about a minute and a half off the pace of a real hot hatch, which we associate the RS brand with. We bet there are other 7-seat SUVs that are even faster but never went for a record lap.
We might be looking at this project from a completely wrong angle. If you consider the Kodiaq to be a very nice Skoda SUV, then the RS is the nicest version of that. Likewise, the Octavia RS TDI is not faster than a base Octavia 1.8 TSI, but it's more desirable.
As we've discussed in our previous post, the RS body kit is quite subtle here. They basically just blacked out the upper grille, changed the lower one and included a bunch of elements from the Kodiaq SportLine. At least the rear exhaust features those trademark double mufflers, and they don't look face.
The unimpressive specs also include a 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) time of 7 seconds and a 220 kph (137 mph) top speed. You shouldn't even be drag racing a Clio RS. Standard kit will include Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) system bundling the Driving Mode Select, Alcantara seats, 20-inch wheels, LED headlights and a 7-speed DSG, so look for a starting price of around €45,000.