Why We’re Living With A Skoda Kodiaq vRS For 6 Months

Last year, I went to Ireland to have a go in the new Skoda Kodiaq, and I came back feeling like I’d just spent 24 hours in a sensory deprivation chamber. Skoda’s big family barge is just that sort of car – relaxing to drive, relaxing to operate, and relaxing to just be around.

And that’s exactly as it should be, because the Kodiaq is, first and foremost, designed for hauling families around, and families are noisy, messy and occasionally stressful things, so a family car that can dial out that chaos and just give you a nice, big metaphorical hug is doing its job well.

So what happens when you try to turn that big, friendly family bus into a performance car? The Kodiaq vRS, that’s what happens.

Now, the term ‘performance car’ is obviously all relative here. Skoda’s vRS models have never been about making your face hurt with acceleration or reshuffling your internal organs with high cornering Gs. They simply aim to blend Skoda’s usual pleasantness with a bit more pace and handling prowess.

That’s the case with the Kodiaq vRS. It borrows its 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot wholesale from the base model VW Golf GTI. It makes the same 261bhp as in the Golf, although torque has been usefully bumped from 273 to 295lb ft. It’s an engine that’s ample for punting around a hot hatch, but when transplanted into a 1.8-tonne, seven-seater, all-wheel drive SUV, it makes for numbers that are merely brisk by modern standards: 0-62mph takes 6.4 seconds, and top speed is 143mph.

Nevertheless, it’s the quickest Kodiaq you can get, and it wears Skoda’s sporty badge. It’s got the VW Group’s excellent DCC adaptive dampers as standard too, and a cabin full of suede (sporty) and red accents (racy), all of which begs the question: does trying to turn the cuddly regular Kodiaq into a wannabe sports car spoil things, or can it pull off the dual personalities?

That’s what we want to find out with our new long-termer, this Velvet Red Kodiaq vRS, which is joining the CT fleet for the next six months. At a £54,575 entry price, the vRS is already pushing the typical Skoda affordability to its plausible limits – in fact, it’s the most expensive car Skoda sells right now. With the options of metallic paint, the Winter Pack and a panoramic roof, our car’s £58,360 list price is pushing it dangerously close to ‘premium’ territory.

But then, if it does everything we ask of it for a lot less than a similar car from one of the posh German brands, it should still tick the Skoda box. That’s why we’ll be subjecting it to everything from long-haul motorway runs to B-road blasts. And while an editorial team entirely consisting of single, childless men in their 20s (until next week, as 29-year-old editor Ryan Hirons is at pains to constantly point out) might not be best suited to testing the Kodiaq’s family cred, we’ll be doing our best to fill it with people and all their associated clutter whenever possible.

And at the end of our six months, if the Kodiaq vRS excels at all that, and trying to make a performance car out of it doesn’t spoil what made us like the standard car so much, we’ll be happy to say that a £55k Skoda does in fact make perfect sense. No pressure then, Skodiaq.