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Michael Taylor21 Oct 2014
REVIEW

Skoda Octavia Scout 2015 Review

Yet again, Volkswagen’s Czech outpost fires in something unexpectedly good, but is it good enough to woo CX-5, RAV4 and Forester buyers?

Skoda Octavia Scout
Launch Review
Lisbon, Portugal

Europe’s font of unexpectedly pleasant automotive surprises, Skoda, has delivered another one. The Scout is a calm-riding, practical and cheery mid-size soft-roader. The only question is whether Australians want to pay $40,000-plus for the all-paw version of the Octavia when the standard car starts in the mid-$20s.

It’s about to get even more crowded in the mid-size SUV market. It’s not enough that up to 20 models, led by the Mazda CX-5, Toyota RAV4 and Subaru Forester, are all battling for the same customers, so here comes Skoda.

The Volkswagen Group's Czech brand only launched its Octavia last year and now it has lifted it a bit to create the new Octavia Scout. But where the bottom-end of the Octavia wagon range chimes in at around $23,000s, Skoda has warned the Scout will be pitched smack on Forester money.

So by March or April next year, when the entry-level version arrives with its 110kW turbo-diesel and six-speed manual, you can expect a pricetag right around the $40,000 zone, if not a touch under it.

The top-end Octavia Scout, meantime, will stop before $50,000, powered by the same 135kW TDI that Skoda uses in the vRS Octavia and matched with a seven-speed DSG.

In the middle will be this car — the one Skoda expects to be the biggest seller of all Scouts — the 132kW version of the 1.8-litre turbocharged direct-injection four-cylinder engine petrol. This version of the Volkswagen Group’s EA888 motor also sees service in the Octavia Elegance.

It’s a fine engine, too, with 280Nm of torque being pumped out of it at just 1350rpm (which is actually 400rpm lower than the grunter diesel can deliver) and staying until 4500rpm.

The entry-level diesel manages the sprint to 100km/h in 9.1 seconds, but the 135kW version does it in 7.8 seconds — the same as the TSI. Both the diesels use 5.1L/100km, but the TSI is a touch thirstier, at 6.9L/100km with 158g/km of CO2 emissions.

Skoda mates both the TSI and the 135kW TDI to seven-speed dual-clutch transmissions (the 110kW TDI uses a six-speed manual), then adds a lightly fiddled version of Volkswagen’s Haldex V all-wheel drive system.

If you’re wondering why this sort of car exists, the Volkswagen Group has had plenty of success with it, including the Audi Allroad versions of the A4 and A6 and the Alltrack versions of Volkswagen models. Even the last generation of the Scout accounted for eight percent of Skoda’s total Octavia sales.

SUVs are also the largest segment of the market for cars this size and Skoda insists the higher body and all-wheel drive gives it more flexibility for more people, so they think it will richen up the model mix at the top end.

It sits 31mm higher than the standard wagon, so it has 171mm of ground clearance (which is more than you get in an Audi Q3) and there’s a Rough Road package to protect the sensitive bits, largely through a fibre-reinforced sump guard that’s a lot stronger than it looks.

It has its own front and rear bumper designs, fog lights, protective side cladding and it looks more rugged on its 17-inch wheels than the standard (and quite neat) Octavia wagon.

But, being an Octavia at heart, it loses none of the base car’s impressive practicality and an appearance that successfully walks the line between no-nonsense and very comfortable.

At 4685mm long, it’s got the Octavia’s enormous cargo capacity (610/1740 litres) as standard, along with a double-sided boot floor cover and a bunch of other incredibly useful touches.

The cabin isn’t a beautiful place to be, but it is very practical and easy to live with. It’s also large, with enough space for adults in the rear – even for very long journeys – and cubbyholes everywhere, including beneath the driver’s seat. It also has rear doors that open nice and wide and having its seats up a touch higher doesn’t hurt getting in and out, either.

It uses the MirrorLink system to put your smartphone’s operations up on the bigger in-dash screen. Well, it does in Europe, but it won’t in Australia, where a lack of Apple integration has cruelled its cleverness to the realms of What If scenarios, at least for now...

Also available in Europe is radar cruise control, a system that senses other cars coming when you’re reversing out of car parks, an autonomous city-braking system that figures things out if the driver doesn’t and the list goes on. If the Octavia wagon has it, so does the Scout, and if the safety systems aren’t enough, the Scout also has nine airbags.

The leather and Alcantara seats are curiously styled and stitched, but no less comfortable for it, with strong side bolstering and a wide range of adjustment. Everything is easy to find and use, too, and the touch-screen multimedia display allows you to flit between its options with the swipe of a finger. Rest it on the car set-up option and you can choose the Scout’s off-road, on-road and eco settings.

The off-road ability is clearly not in the LandCruiser class, but it’s a useful addition, especially if you’ve got some dirt road in your life somewhere. We tested it over mud and sand and it worked pretty effectively, largely because it doesn’t use the slower pressure-building actuator from the Haldex IV and reacts a lot sharper as it spreads drive around the car. No longer does the Haldex AWD system bog down in sand as it waits for enough actuator pressure to build before drive can reach the rear wheels.

As off-roaders go, the Scout is handy rather than brilliant, coping with our brief flirtation with sand more than easily, partly thanks to its latest generation electronic diff locks at both ends, which brake spinning wheels to send the drive to the tyres that can use it.

When it’s not being asked to do difficult work, though, the Scout utilises the fuel economy benefits of running as a front-wheel drive and the system is now so seamless that you struggle to pick when the car has shifted into all-wheel drive or vice versa. It’s very effective and requires absolutely nothing by way of driver input.

It’s an MQB-based machine, sitting on the same architectural layout as the Golf Wagon and the Seat Leon ST, so the Volkswagen Group has every excuse to have the bugs ironed out of it by now.

And, from a driver’s perspective, it has. At 1447kg, the Scout is a nimble, user-friendly device that can’t upset the driver even if it wanted to. It’s that competent.

The diesel engines might offer the frugality, but Skoda expects the petrol engine to be the biggest seller and that’s probably an accurate assumption. It’s a smooth unit, as you’d expect from a modular engine design that also sees service in Audi’s A3 and A4. It’s also strong from very low rpm and lends itself to short shifting, even though it has no qualms about spinning freely to its redline, either.

The pace is there, but the strength is more important, so much so that it barely matters what gear the DSG lands you in -- it will always have enough torque lying around to pull away.

The extra ride height of the Scout does nothing to hurt the ride, even smoothing out all but the very worst of big potholes in its stride and all but eradicating anything smaller from the driver’s backside.

It doesn’t pay a huge price in handling, either. It’s nimble enough, though the extra height does give the car significantly more body roll than the standard wagon. It’s faithful to the helm and changes direction easily and it’s not just the electronic security blankets, either, because the car’s handling is equally clean and fuss-free even with the ESP switched off.

The only significant blot on the copybook is that it does have a fair amount of wind noise coming from the windscreen pillars, but that only reaches a level of mild annoyance at speeds above what Australians are allowed to do.

In all, Skoda's newest Scout is a significantly good car that does very little wrong, a lot right and even more stuff Skoda-ishly. It places day-to-day practicality far ahead of any quirky positioning statements contrived by the marketing department and you can feel very quickly that it will be an easy car to live with.

But are Australians going to pay this much for a car that will be more than $10,000 dearer than the Skoda Octavia wagon? After all, that’s most of this car, but $10,000 cheaper.


2015 Skoda Octavia Scout pricing and specifications:

On sale: March/April 2015
Price: $40,000-$50,000 (estimated)
Engine: 1.8-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder
Output: 132kW/280Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: 6.9L/100km
CO2: 158g/km
Safety rating: TBA

What we liked: Not so much:
>> Soft, easy ride >> The Yeti’s already here
>> Solid feel of strength >> Added weight of AWD
>> Practical, versatile interior >> $10K-plus price hike over Octavia

Also consider: Mazda CX-5, Toyota RAV4, Subaru Forester

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Written byMichael Taylor
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Our team of independent expert car reviewers and journalistsMeet the team
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