Now it’s no longer needed to wait until the Geneva event for this sedan. After lots of unofficial photos and a teaser, Škoda has released the first official pictures of the new-generation Octavia. If the exterior easily allows to deduce this car has some kind of relation with the Volkswagens, any quicker look at the technical specifications can finish blowing that cover. This article will use this sedan as an example of the good and the bad features that come with this strategy of designing cars so related with each other.
The original Octavia came after the Second World War, at first using the codename 440. The idea at that time was to create a resistant car without any other concerns but the lowest final price possible. However, this car came with a much more elegant design than what was seen at the other Soviet vehicles, which gave it a different status. This name was dropped in the 1970s with the end of that car’s production and came back to life only twenty-five years later. The automaker was already bought by Volkswagen, making Škoda their “pragmatic” division almost like what Renault does with Dacia. Describing this concept needs wider-meaning words than “low-cost” because they aren’t restricted to the cheaper categories – Octavia, for instance, is a mid-size sedan. Their public is much more rational, giving away design and performance extravagances in exchange of a reliable, non-expensive vehicle. Until the last decade this idea used to imply maintaining older projects or taking equipments away to reduce the price, but in nowadays these parameters have changed. Cost reduction is now considered since the car’s first sketches, which enables cleaner designs, simpler construction and specially sharing as many parts as possible with other cars, from the platform to visible items, in cases like Logan and Sandero’s new generation.
Even though this sedan does lead to think of some kind of Rapid’s bigger brother, this is just Škoda’s good designing. It still carries a very formal appearance, but this formality is now dissociated from being old-fashioned. Octavia now has an agressive interpretation of the brand’s typical design, characterized by two bigger ideas: the overall design is based mainly on straight lines, while each element has individually became a little irregularly-shaped. This means a proportion change, which still makes the car resemble the current Jetta or Exeo but with nice differences, such as the much more creative rear window cut. But if someone is already wondering where’s that mentioned parts' sharing, the answer isn’t hard to explain: MQB platform. Since its previous uses were at Seat León, VW Golf and Audi A3, this is the very first sedan to use Volkswagen’s modular platform. This allowed some dimension increases to Octavia, resulting at bigger cabin and trunk space. In fact, entering the car reveals an even bigger déjà vu if you have already driven any current VW car: there are simple lines which will certainly repeat the excellent construction quality, although Škoda seems to leave the other colors to the group’s other brands – even the touchscreen’s software seems to be restricted to black and gray. This car will offer four TDI engine options with diesel and four TSI with gasoline, these ones including a low-consumption 1.6 and a high-performance 1.8.
