Space Cruiser
by David Finlay (05 Oct 02)

My friend John is six feet six tall and needs a lot of headroom in a car. A few years ago he told me it was irritating that most new cars with the interior space he needed were too expensive, because manufacturers always loaded them with as much equipment as possible, and suggested that there must be a market for large cars which had far less standard equipment than normal and therefore cost less. At the time I reckoned that nobody would build such a thing.

I was fairly confident with this opinion until Skoda announced that it was about to launch the Superb. Based on a long-wheelbase version of the Volkswagen Passat platform, the Superb is huge. It could carry four Johns without the slightest difficulty. It's also a very rare example of a car in which I had to move the seat forward so that I could select the first of the six available gears without stretching.

The only other car I've driven this year - in fact, for several years - that comes close to matching it for passenger room is the Mercedes E-Class. And of course the E-Class is an awful lot more expensive. The Skoda is comfortable, and reasonably well equipped, but it's not festooned with gubbins; so even a higher-up model such as the V6 TDI tested here is a bargain by comparison with the Mercedes.

Skoda was clearly determined from the start that the Superb should ride like a limousine, and to a large extent it does. Whenever there is any kind of undulation in the road, it spends a good deal of time smoothing out the effects. Admittedly, it feels like a slightly old-fashioned limousine. Nowadays cars of similar size from Mercedes or Jaguar combined fabulous ride quality with sharper steering and more purposeful damping. And the Superb starts teetering as soon as it encounters a wet road, even if you're driving it fairly gently.

Still, the general effect is of a car which wears a set of very comfortable seven-league boots. I haven't driven many cars in which I could look forward to a journey of a few hundred miles in such a relaxed frame of mind.

Diesel Plus V6 Sound Effects

The turbo diesel engine isn't the most up-to-date on the market, so you do hear and feel what's going on under the bonnet. But since it's a six-cylinder unit, the sound effects are not unpleasant, and I quickly got to like the gentle background thrum.

Despite the overall size and weight of the car, the TDI is sufficiently strong to provide thoroughly adequate performance. And there's more than enough torque to justify the use of very high gearing, which in turn means that you don't use up a lot of diesel. My average for a week was around 40mpg, and that included quite a lot of country-road work as well as some gentler cruising on motorways.

Unlike sister company Seat, Skoda tends to follow the VW Group party line when it comes to styling, and I wish the Superb wasn't quite so obviously related to the Passat and A4. Apart from the extra wheelbase, it's only the trademark baroque radiator grille which distinguishes the Superb from these cars, so it tends to fade into the traffic. I think it deserves better - and while we're on the subject I think Skoda as a whole deserves much better than the apologetic, look-we're-not-as-bad-as-you-think advertising campaign it's been saddled with.

Skoda's other models, the Fabia and Octavia, are excellent examples of their type. The Superb may not quite live up to its name (which the company first used back in the 1930s), but it's a very fine, excellently built and astonishingly roomy machine which completes the Skoda range in an entirely satisfactory manner.

Price: £20,400
Capacity: 2496
Power: 155bhp
0-62mph: 9.5 seconds
Maximum speed: 136mph
Economy: 51.4mpg extra urban, 39.8mpg combined
CO2 emissions: 192g/km
Insurance: Group 13
Skoda figures.

Second Opinion:
The Comfort is the middle of the three Superb specifications, and comfort is exactly the word. Nothing short of the Maybach gets close for rear seat legroom. Yes, the suspension and the V6 turbo diesel engine are both suited to relaxed long-distance cruising, which is fact rather than just opinion, and I can't imagine anybody buying a Superb having hallucinated that it's a sports saloon. But that formidable torque helped the V6 TDI to win the Caravan Club's overall Towcar of the Year award. Against other large-scale rivals, the Comfort seems exceptional value for money. Not festooned with gubbins? Well, not in the sense of overwhelming electronic systems, but how about the cruise control, the illuminated interior door handles, the rear park sensor which is essential when manoeuvring this very long saloon, and - the killer blow - the wet umbrella holder built into the nearside rear armrest? Ross Finlay.

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