2021 Skoda Kodiaq vRS | PH Review

The Kodiaq has swapped its diesel for a 245hp petrol engine – is it the seven-seater you've been looking for?

By John Howell / Friday, October 29, 2021 / Loading comments

It’s amazing the number of cars that pop in a Nordschleife lap time to bolster credibility. Take the previous Skoda Kodiaq vRS diesel. It was marketed as having posted a ‘ring time of 9 minutes 29.8 seconds to make it sound good. Skoda could have gone the whole hog and claimed that was 13-seconds quicker than a grand prix car. Which it was, if the car in question was the Mercedes-Benz W154 setting pole position for the 1939 grand prix. It all goes to show you can prove anything you want with inventive stats.

The truth is, for all the stats and marketing hype, the outgoing vRS diesel felt about as sporty as the Humber – which you can take to mean the bridge or the car. Mind you, it was grand if you wanted to lope along – I remember covering many miles in one and it dispatched them beautifully on a wave of mid-range diesel torque and with a decent average MPG to boot. But did I come away thinking it was a sports SUV? Not in the slightest. One of its own stats proved as much: it would glacially slide from 0-62mph in 7.0 seconds.

Now the vRS has acquired the engine that, arguably, it should’ve had from the start. It’s the omnipresent EA888 2.0 TSI motor, which, in this instance, is tuned to 245hp. That’s just a mild hike in power over the bi-turbo diesel, but two things bode well: we know that the 2.0 TSI has a rev-happy character that’s more suited to anything with sporting pretensions, and it offers a weight saving of 60kg. On top of that there’s a new seven-speed DSG transmission that shaves another 5.2kg from the vRS’s bulk. As before, that’s powering all four wheels – although you won’t find any of the fancy diffs and drift modes that you’ll have read about in our Golf R and RS3 drives.

As part of a general range freshen-up, the vRS also has some mild styling tweaks and new kit, including slimmer headlights that are now Matrix LED units as standard. Also new are the – and I quote from the press pack – ‘burnished 20-inch Sagitarius alloy wheels in metallic black and aerodynamic covers.’ They sound impressive but what do you think? They look to me like they’d be more suited to an Enyaq hoping to eke out a few more miles range than a sports SUV.

Inside it’s still a very comfortable and accommodating car. For a start, it’s got seven seats, which does make it a very useful set of wheels for a large family, as do the acres of space all round and decent boot. And to distinguish it as a vRS, you get superb sports seats in the front that are adept at supporting you in the lower-back area as much as clamping you vice-like through corners. They, like the rest of the interior, are trimmed partly in fetching Alcantara with red stitching, although the carbon-fibre-weave-effect panels look pretty naff. At least the carbon-look trim on the dashboard looks a bit more authentic. Sticking with the practicality theme for a while longer, it’s also worth mentioning the little touches that make Skodas as user-friendly as the average toaster, including the umbrella stashed in the driver’s door and the two Velcro clamps under the boot floor. You can position them around any item in the boot to stop it flying around as you enjoy the vRS’s performance and handling.

On which note… The first day or so spent pottering around in the vRS had me thinking it was business as usual: it’s still a comfortable but lazy thing. The car rides well, with a fine primary ride and only some mild niggle in the form of secondary intrusions that you wouldn’t feel in lower-spec models. At 70mph it’s also quiet. There’s very little wind and road noise, just the bassy accompaniment provided by the Dynamic Sound Boost – if you have it switched on. This produces sound pulses in the exhaust that mimic something grander than an in-line four. I am not normally one for fake noise, but, if you’re going to have it, I’d rather this than digital signals piped through speakers. The previous diesel vRS had the same set-up, and I recall that sounding like an off-beat V8. The TSI’s discordant harmonics are more reminiscent of a five-cylinder warble and, truth be told, quite pleasing to listen to as you mooch about. By the time the revs are up to 5,000rpm or so, that’s overridden by the EA888’s familiar gravelly, four-cylinder noise.

It’s when you start pressing on that you realise there is a bit more to the vRS’s abilities that justify its new billing. It still isn’t flat-out fast by today’s measures – officially the zero-to-62mph sprint is 6.6 seconds. Yet once you move beyond the usefully linear responses of the first two-thirds of the rev range – and get over the generally lacklustre responses of the DSG ‘box that slurs like a torque converter at times – and start using the engine’s upper reaches, it feels energetic enough. So much so that it’s well worth stretching it out towards the red line. Obviously this leads to a more attacking style of driving that, along a decently twisting B-road, the vRS is very capable of supporting. It certainly hasn’t got the poise of a Macan – there’s no evidence of oversteer on exit – but it has plenty of grip and (from memory) greater agility than the heavier diesel. If you really ham it up, you can feel the rear wheels pushing, helping to resist any plough-on understeer, and that breeds confidence. You can certainly carry a healthy turn of speed into and out of corners with little fuss.

It’s a similar story with the steering, which by default is VW’s progressive set-up. Don’t expect it to dial-up any sensations of the road surface, but the weighting and accuracy are hard to fault if you leave it in the mid-way Normal setting. That’s the best setting for the adaptive dampers, too, which, along with the fine ride quality, provide a surprising ability to limit the upset of mid-corner crests and callouses. The brakes are also good: progressive and powerful. Even after several miles of quick driving involving some heavy stops, the pedal was stayed solid despite the acrid smell of heat being generated.

As much as I liked the old diesel vRS as a car to journey in, I could never see the point of it – especially when you factored in the enormous cost uplift that brought very little in the way of extra verve. And to begin with, the TSI model seemed like more of the same. Yet the more I spent time with it, the more it delivered on unexpected hidden depths. Combined with its continued long-distance credentials and superb practicality, the vRS does, at last, make a case for itself. It’s more effective at delivering cross-country pace rather than true entertainment, but if that’s all you need then fill your boots. That said, if you don’t need such a big car with so many seats, you’ll have to wrestle with this thought: for similar money, you could have an entry-level Porsche Macan. That has the same engine with a bit more power, albeit is less well equipped. On that score that the Kodiaq vRS, inevitably, still has a fight for credibility. But at least now it has a chance.


SPECIFICATION | SKODA KODIAQ VRS 2.0 TSI 245 DSG 4X4

Engine: 1984cc, turbocharged, 4-cylinder
Transmission: 7-speed DSG, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 245
Torque (lb ft): 273
0-62mph: 6.6 secs
Top speed: 144mph
Weight: 1826kg (inc. driver)
MPG: 27.2
CO2: 236g/km
Price: £45,170

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