A family SUV in racy sneakers
I have to admit it; I’m a sucker for a good bucket seat.
It’s probably due to growing up in West Cork, in the heart of rallying territory. There was nothing cooler in my world back then than a Moonstone Blue Sierra Cosworth with those deep, bolstered, high-back Recaro bucket seats.
That probably explains why the new Skoda Karoq Sportline manages to overwhelm my normal I-don’t-like-SUVs knee-jerk reaction.
Peep inside the cabin and it’s rocking a set of truly gorgeous bucket seats. High backed, in the ‘tombstone’ style with integrated headrests, they also get a racing-seat style harness slot in the back (not that anyone, I’m fairly sure, is going to ever fit a six-point harness to a family crossover) and a diamond-quilted pattern with contrast white stitching.
They look great and they feel event better — firm and supportive in just the right areas, soft and squishy in others. Frankly, not even high-end premium car makers do seats much better than this.
Okay, so maybe I’m getting carried away with the whole seating thing here, but for me these gorgeous buckets are emblematic of where the Skoda brand sits right now.
Once the butt of all of those jokes, once the maker of Communist cars that were, really, only half-a-step up from the ignominy of being a Lada, Skoda has truly risen to a peak of near-perfection.
Skoda is now the fifth-best selling brand in Ireland, ahead of such more traditional favourites as Renault and Opel, and the sensible Skoda Octavia is the third-best selling model, behind only those sales behemoths that are the Hyundai Tucson and Nissan Qashqai.
Is it any wonder, really? For decades now, Skoda has traded hard on the whole ‘it’s a Volkswagen but a bit cheaper’ thing, and it’s clearly worked well. As a brand, it’s now starting to move beyond that, building a reputation for reliability and practicality that’s, frankly, hard to match.
You might think that, for such a practically-minded brand, taking its upright family SUV and bolting a whole lot of sporty ‘go-faster’ add-ons would be a bit a bit daft. Somehow, though, it just seems to work.
Sporty black accessories (those alloy wheels, which go up to 19 inches in diameter, the rear bumper, the radiator grille and wing mirror covers), along with a front sports bumper and a rear bumper incorporating decorative chrome-plated trim, accentuate the fact that this, according to Skoda, is the most dynamic Karoq on offer.
Inside, quite apart from those glorious seats, there’s a multifunction sports steering wheel wrapped in perforated leather, some carbon-look decorative trim and the black upholstered ceiling to go with the car’s dynamic exterior.
There are no mechanical changes, though. No bespoke, sporty suspension, beyond the fact that those bigger wheels — 18 inch rims on our test car — will naturally firm up the ride quality. There is a driving mode selector that lets you toggle between Sport, Normal, and Eco modes but that really just tweaks the weight of the steering and the sharpness of the throttle response.
To be honest, though, that’s just fine. The Karoq is well-mannered and pleasant to drive anyway, and too much ‘sporty’ tinkering would have probably harmed that.
The steering, although not too good at feeding back information from the road surface, is nicely weighted and precise, and although our car was ‘only’ front-wheel drive, it managed to feel grippy and agile in most situations.
Even the ride quality’s not bad. Yes, the bigger wheels do firm things up a bit but even around town the Karoq Sportline felt pliant and comfortable.
You can have Sportline spec on any of the Karoq’s engine lineup, bar the basic 1.0 litre TSI three-cylinder petrol. I guess trying to call a car with that engine sporty would have been a bit of a stretch for even the hardest-working marketing department.
Ours came with the familiar 2.0 litre TDI 150hp diesel engine and, thankfully, a six-speed manual gearbox.
I say thankfully because in other VW Group models that use this engine (or the 190hp version) with the DSG automatic gearbox, we’ve noticed that they can be worryingly, almost dangerously, lethargic at low rpm, such as when trying to pull out of a tight junction into flowing traffic.
With the six-speed manual — which shifts lightly and easily — there was no such issue and the Karoq’s overall performance was actually pretty impressive. It’s not quite a junior performance car, but it’s brisk enough, and overall fuel economy of 6.3 litres per 100km (that’s 44.8mpg) is at least decent, if not exceptional.
Where the Karoq Sportline scores, though, is in how you use it more than how you drive it. The interior is really lovely — it’s more sculpted than the slightly-too-plain cabin of the bigger seven-seat Kodiaq, and the Sportline additions really help to flesh things out.
The big eight-inch touschreen in the centre of the dash is still one of the best in the business, and the new virtual cockpit digital instrument pack is also really nice, and a reasonably priced-option at €594.
You can even, if you like, call up a display option that puts a big, red, rev-counter front and centre and pretend, for a moment, that you’re in a Porsche 911.
You’re not, of course. You’re actually in a sensible, reliable, easy-to-use Skoda with a vast 588 litre boot and a reasonable €35,160 price tag. And awesome seats. Don’t forget the awesome seats.