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Michael Taylor8 May 2015
REVIEW

Skoda Superb 2015 Review

Welcome to the world of the new Skoda Superb: lighter, more economical and far, far bigger inside (as if it needed to be)

Skoda Superb
International Launch Review
Florence, Italy

Skoda is known for practicality and interior space, but even for the Czech mate, the new Superb just looks like it’s showing off. It has enormous luggage space twinned with ludicrously clever usability touches, efficient powertrains and even a coherent design language. Once they sort out the damper rates, it’ll be just about spot on.

I still get asked, even at this distance from the crash site, why private buyers deserted the Commodore and Falcon.

The SUV thing smashed them, for sure. Novated leasing, too, plus driving them in the cities didn’t help. And then there are cars like this one. Its predecessor didn’t exactly fly off the boats, but it had all the attributes Australians once loved in their big metal. And the new one is a lot better, and it’s had almost all of the ugly scraped off it.

About 20 years ago, a car with enormous interior space and cargo capacity, a fat features list and a track record of reliability would have tripped across the gravitational event horizon of the once-mighty locals and been crushed into irrelevance.

Not today. Today, car buyers are more sophisticated and, Skoda hopes, more able to push their own chips in for a car like this.

That’s why, when it arrives here next year, it will start around $40,000 and top out just shy of $60,000, and even that’s for a flagship all-wheel drive model that’s effectively a bigger, more practical Golf R.

The old Superb had a reputation for being the biggest mid-sized car around, especially inside.
This new one is bigger, especially inside. And if you want to be amazed (as more than one rival designer has admitted), you just have to look and touch, again, inside.

It’s bigger outside as well, though. It’s based off the Volkswagen Group’s MQB B architecture, which also sits beneath the new Volkswagen Passat. And if the second 'B' doesn’t stand for 'Bigger', it might as well.

It’s eight centimetres longer in the wheelbase, which only adds to the Superb’s reputation as a great car in which to spend rear-seat time. It’s also 47mm wider, though its predecessor hardly made life difficult for those with claustrophobic tendencies.

But the neat trick is that while it just got bigger in its critical, comfort-oriented dimensions, it somehow got lighter, too – a lot lighter, if you consider 75kg to be a lot of weight. The range CO2 average is down 30 per cent on the old car and the Superb’s average acceleration figures are 20 per cent faster.

And, at the same time, it’s stiffer, stronger and safer. It’s 13 per cent more resistant to twisting forces, about 20 per cent of the core body is made from high-strength steels and the cabin carries up to nine airbags (though the minimum count is six).

All hunky dory so far, then.

There are five petrol engines and three diesels for the European Superbs and all of them are four-cylinder turbocharged units. Australia, though, is taking just three: the 140kW 2.0-litre turbodiesel, the 162kW 2.0-litre, turbocharged petrol motor (expected to be the volume version) and the thumper of a 206kW turbocharged four.

The last will be the most expensive of the Superbs when they land here around April next year, largely because it’s got the Volkswagen Golf R’s complete all-wheel drive, turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder powertrain stuffed inside it. And a Golf R hatch is $54,500, give or take, so the Skoda Superb flagship will cost a little more for a lot more metal.

There are no manual transmissions and no hydraulic automatics, because those technologies have been supplanted by six-speed, dual-clutch units. While the flagship is all-wheel drive, the first two models will be front-drive only.

The chassis and suspension architecture are pretty familiar, thanks to its role beneath the, err, superb Passat, though the Superb’s handling envelope is not without its issues.

On the Tuscan roads Skoda used on the launch, the three-stage adaptive damping system proved less than ideal. The Comfort setting wallowed dreadfully over bumps and undulations, the default Normal mode (normally the 'engineer’s choice' setting) wasn’t a lot better and it was only in its sportiest setting that the Superb feel like it had the body control we’ve come to expect from MQB cars. But then it sacrificed some ride comfort to achieve it.

Skoda says the Australian cars will get a fixed damping set-up as standard and that it will have greater rebound firmness than the first two settings on the adaptive unit, so that might be a problem solved by the time it gets here. Still, watch this space for the Australian launch on Australian roads.

Then there’s the issue of wind noise. All three versions actually generate a fair bit of it, though mainly above 120km/h and, it takes a while to realise, mainly because the powertrains are so quiet and calm.

All three engines felt fairly brisk in the Superbs we drove, though it’s a little tough to justify the 206kW version in this kind of car, except if you’re trying to prove a point about the absence of six-cylinder engines. While it was quick, it never felt overwhelmingly quick and it felt a little like the engine note and fury was selfishly overwhelming the rest of the package, looking for attention.

At 1615kg (including 75kg for the driver, who hasn’t weighed 75kg for some time), it’s also the heaviest machine in the Superb family. That doesn’t stop it whipping through the 0-100km/h sprint in just 5.6 seconds and being reined in at 250km/h.

Its all-wheel drive system is clever enough to throw all of its torque to the front or the back, depending on the crisis at hand, but it somehow never becomes overtly entertaining in the Superb.

It just never feels quite together or fluid in this package, though that might be as much to do with the damping selections as much as anything else.

Its electro-mechanical steering feels a touch light until you call on the sportiest mode, when it adds weight and initial speed, and the chassis feels more at home on longer bends than it does rapidly changing direction on tighter bends.

The sweet spot in the range feels like the 162kW petrol variant. Its 350Nm of torque isn’t the sort of number that jumps out loudly, but it arrives nice and early at 1500rpm and is pulling willingly before then. The torque peak tapers off at 4400rpm – just 100 revs before the power peak takes over – so its delivery has been well thought through.

And that’s the way it drives. It’s seamlessly, effortlessly complete everywhere, spins up nicely from low revs and is smooth all the way up to 6500rpm. Its engine note is nice enough, but unobtrusive and it never aims to be the star of the show.

It tips in at 1505kg (again, with Europe’s standard 75kg for the driver), and that leaves it with an NEDC figure of 6.2L/100km and a sprint to 100km/h in 7.0 seconds, which is about all you’d need in a car like this.

The 140kW diesel does its job, too, with its 400Nm of torque hitting hard at 1750rpm and enough strength to get to 100km/h in 7.7 seconds. Its power delivery is unusually linear for a diesel and it’s smooth until the upper reaches of its abilities (but the same can be said for the four-pot diesels from Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW) and it scores 4.5L/100km on the NEDC cycle.

Australians can only get their Superbs with the dual-clutch transmission, and there’s good and bad in that. The good is that the shifts are slick, clean and smooth, but the sticking points on DSG remain in evidence sometimes. All three cars could be lackadaisical off the line as the ‘box slipped its clutches and some of its manual downshifts don’t keep time with the paddle work. It’s best left alone to make its decisions, and then it does its best work.

Its body sports a far cleaner design than the predecessor, too, and is downright gorgeous from the rear three-quarter view. Its front overhang is 61mm shorter than before, which has done wonders for its proportions, and it continues the Octavia’s chiselled themes.

The old Superb was all about interior space, but things have changed. There isn’t space inside the new Superb. There’s acreage. Lifting the boot is an exercise in jaw-dropping provocation to those unfamiliar with Skoda’s Tardis ethos.

It. Is. Enormous. Even with the 60:40 split/fold rear seats in their upright positions, the Superb still offers 625 litres of cargo space, which makes you wonder how much more they’ll dig up when they make the wagon. Scary. It’s also a liftback, which makes it a lot easier to put odd-shaped stuff in it than a conventional bootlid.

But it’s not just big. It’s usefully big. And it’s well thought out. And it is trimmed so nicely it puts a C-Class Mercedes-Benz, with its unpainted boot struts, to shame.

Where the Mercedes has a cheap carpet cut to cover the side space behind the rear wheels, Skoda uses harder plastic trim to make a proper panel and there’s a trick inside them.

There are two short sections of plastic hidden inside the panel that can fold from straight to right back on themselves. The reason? Well, they’ve got very strong Velcro on their flat bottoms and they’re designed to support a bag or suitcase so it doesn’t slide around in the boot.

And they work, beautifully, simply and with stunning effect. We tried every trick in the book to dislodge a 10kg carry-on case from its one Velcro bit, but couldn’t. It’s the sort of thing Skoda likes to point to as its kind of solution.

But it’s not the only clever solution in the boot. There are two different types of bag hook on either side of the boot, there is a cargo net inside the top shelf, an LED boot light that can be removed and used as a torch and there are four tie-down hooks.

Look, we don’t normally harp on about boots more than engines or timing or pricing, but, well, it’s just astonishingly impressive. There are cars two classes above the Superb that don’t have this much space, much less have it this cleverly organised.

It continues in the rear, where the seats are very, very comfortable and there is legroom even for large adults to move in comfort. Its leg, head, shoulder and knee room measurements leave it just a touch smaller than the back seat of a Commodore.

It also inherits the benefits of MQB architecture, which gives it 18 electronic-based safety systems including a blind-spot warning system and city braking functions and radar cruise control.

We tested the flagship Laurin and Klement version (named after Skoda’s founders) as well as the lower specification levels, and came away thinking the mid-level was just about the best.

For sure, the Laurin and Klement looked classy, with plenty of high-gloss black trim and soft, thick plastics on the dash and the doors, lots of stitched leather, electric boot opening and closing, heated seats and bi-xenon headlights. And it makes very little financial sense, even in Europe.

But the mid-spec SE level offered enough of what you want at this level, along with the umbrellas that fit inside each of the front doors.

Then there’s an 8.0-inch touch-screen (which is optional on the lesser-spec cars) that is bright, easy to use and quick to update, then you also get a multifunction leather steering wheel, Bluetooth, climate-control air-conditioning, lumbar support, parking sensors and Alcantara seats.

Mid-level spec, mid-level engine, mid-level pricing. Outrageous upper-level interior space and the utilization of it.

Very good job, Skoda.

2015 Skoda Superb sedan pricing and specifications:
On Sale: April 2016
Price: From about $40,000 (estimated)
Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged in-line four-cylinder petrol
Output: 162kW/350Nm
Transmission: Six-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: 6.2L/100km
CO2: 142g/km
Safety rating: TBA

What we liked: Not so much:
>> Enormous interior space >> Underdamped suspension
>> Innovative, simple thinking >> Limited powertrain options
>> High-quality engineering >> Brand perception lags behind reality
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Written byMichael Taylor
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