Skoda Superb Estate
Recently, I've been scurrilously accused of being 'sponsored by Skoda' after a mere couple of mentions about how good the Superb Combi is at real life. Okay, so it might have been more than a couple of mentions. Repeatedly.
But one of the main ways to assess whether or not a car is successful is to look at the mission statement. If the vehicle does what it is designed to do with a bit of flair, then it's a success - which is why journalists complaining about on-the-limit handling in family cars, or bootspace in supercars makes my teeth itch. If you can manage surprise in the compromise, all to the good, but it's not a core value.
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The truth is in just 3k miles, I've found that the Superb Estate does everything I need it to. Very fast cars on the road are fun, but their window of opportunity is vanishingly small if you can hit 100mph in second gear. I'm far more likely to be rolling back from Heathrow at 11pm after being awake for longer than is strictly healthy and for that, I need comfort, anonymity and ease. Which the Skoda has in spades - and yes, the massive range feeds into that; you don't need to fill it up very much when you can nudge 800-miles to a tank on a motorway cruise.
On the flipside, it's got space that shames vans. Think a Mercedes E-Class Estate is big? That runs 615-litres of loadspace in the back with the seats and everything else in place, 1,830-litres with the seats down. The Superb? Some 690-litres and 1,920-litres seats down - and that's enough to notice, not a points victory. And the Merc starts at £60k for the E220d 2.0-litre diesel with the same power as the Superb.
And it's not just me. My dog Frank loves it, the kids love it - and they're full-sized humans at this point, not stump-legged toddlers - even my aged parents love it thanks to the generous door openings and space for arthritic-slash-plastic knees.
It doesn't stop there though. In a recent test, I found myself testing a triplet of new double-cab pickup trucks, which, under HMRC's new rules, are now taxed as cars and can't reclaim the VAT that made them so appealing. A plain old big estate car is more economical, handles better, has more equipment, is cheaper, more comfy, more secure and faster.
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It even tows - not quite as much as a pickups, but enough to deal with a caravan or trailer. In fact, the only thing the pickups did better was handle big, awkward loads and serious off-roading, and the Superb in this AWD form was more than capable of a wet field (which is what most people need, if we're honest) even if it can't handle ruts or water troughs.
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