Special Report: RALPH MORTON
SKODA director Alasdair Stewart says the new Skoda Octavia, unveiled today (11 December, 2012) at the Skoda Museum in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic, will broaden the brand’s appeal to business users and company car drivers.
The new Skoda Octavia (you can read our road test here) takes its place alongside the newly introduced Skoda Rapid and existing Skoda Superb models.
“The new Skoda Rapid is just slightly smaller than the outgoing Octavia, while the new Octavia is bigger,” Alasdair explains. “When we introduce the new Skoda Superb that will be bigger again.”
To give that some figures, the new Rapid is 4.5m in length, the Octavia 4.7m and the Superb 4.9m.
But is bigger better?
“Yes, I think so,” says Aladair. “Let’s take Audi as an example. They go into a sector and then widen it by offering more choice and model lines within that sector.
“We are doing the same with the new Rapid and Octavia – growing our reach within the company car sector.
“The Rapid is a good business sector car, and will appeal to those who want practicality as well as those drivers coming out of current Octavia.
“The new Skoda Octavia will go up in price but you will get a lot of car and specification for the money, so specification adjusted it’s about the same value.”
Prices for the new Skoda Octavia will be announced on 07 January 2013, while businesses can take their first cars from March.
There will be three specification levels on the new Octavia: S, SE and Elegance. All models will have alloy wheels as standard, Bluetooth mobile phone connectivity and it’s expected that all models will come with satellite navigation as standard – although that was still to be confirmed at the time of writing. Elegance models will come with leather trim.
“The new Octavia is a big entry for us in the company car fleet market,” continues Alasdair. “It’s key for us now to make sure it’s attractive to user-chooser company car drivers and there are compelling offers for SMEs.”
The new Octavia is a big entry for us in the company car fleet market
Alasdair believes the combination of high specification, safety features and low CO2 emission engines will help.
“We’ll start with tax efficient petrol TSI and diesel TDI engines,” says Alsadair, while towards the end of 2013 we’ll introduce a GreenLine version of the Octavia with CO2 emissions as low as 89g/km.
“Strong residual values will also underpin its attractiveness to business car managers.”
