The Love We Have For 'Our' 1.4 Skoda SUV Is Massive

If you’re a CT regular, you’ll know that manufacturers give us cars for longer-term tests. CT Editor Matt is the greediest of us all because he always seems to have about 10 different cars cluttering up his street. Now, for example, he’s got one of my favourite new cars, the Hyundai i30N, as well as a Caterham race car, which makes him more of a racing driver than me. Which is irritating.

Meanwhile, I’m driving his old longtermer - the Audi RS3 - which is a brilliant car that I find a little boring, while Producer Ethan (yes, Ethan) is in charge of our Skoda Kodiaq crew car (if this is news to you, here’s what you’ve missed).

Over the past couple of months, the Kodiaq has been the backbone to every video shoot we do, and as you can see, it’s been put to good use by hauling the Jaguar Mud-Type all the way to Avalanche Adventure.

That’s cool and all, but the really impressive thing about hauling two tonnes-worth of metal (car + braked trailer) is that the Kodiaq did all of that with its 1.4-litre TSI petrol engine. Yes, 1.4-litre petrol engine. Which just goes to show how versatile the little motor is. What’s more, the Kodiaq barely struggled, managing hills, declines, traffic and even dirt tracks (our car is the 1.4 TSI 4x4 DSG version with an electric tow hook).

The car also continues to impress us with how easy everything is; despite being quite big, it doesn’t feel heavy or cumbersome, and that’s thanks to the sprightly engine, slick DSG ‘box, light steering and good visibility (heated seats front and rear also play their part, especially with the tedious weather we’ve been subjected to recently).

The Kodiaq, therefore, is a car we have a lot of time for, and although it’s not a fun car to drive, it copes surprisingly well being hustled on country lanes, which is especially useful when the the guys are getting fast-paced tracking shots out of the back.

The only issues we’ve found so far with the Kodiaq is a blown 12V fuse when we tried to charge our laptop. I spoke to Skoda about this because I thought it might be a fault, but it turns out that we simply exceeded the load rating of the the fuse.

Apart from that, we’ve found that the sat-nav has a tendency to get confused with traffic updates, so sometimes tells you to take a detour because of road works that aren’t there. The Bluetooth has also proven to be slow to connect, and the adaptive cruise control has its moments, sometimes choosing to slow the car down on the motorway with no other car in front. On one occasion it also slowed the car down at the bottom of a hill, presumably because it saw the road’s incline ahead as another vehicle.

To summarise six months and 5000 miles, we’re in no rush for Skoda to take this car back to base.

Sure, the small things above can be mildly irritating, but the Kodiaq as a whole is near faultless, returns good fuel economy, looks decent and is one of the most versatile cars currently on sale. It’s definitely a car I’d recommend, put it that way.