Skoda Citigo 5 door 1.0 MPI Elegance 75PS GreenTech
Skoda car review: John Griffiths
What is it?
The ‘value for money’ tip of the three-pronged fork with which Volkswagen Group is stabbing into the booming global market for frugal, eco-friendly yet surprisingly spacious ‘city’ cars, in company with the stylish VW Up! and SEAT’s faintly more sporty-looking Mii. The three cars might look fairly distinctive but it’s all smoke and body panels – they are essentially the same engineering structure, with common engines and gearboxes.
The fundamental rationale for them is the same, too: provide unfeasibly generous space for four plus some luggage within the smallest practical road ‘footprint’. Then add “grown-up” refinement and ride comfort, easy motorway cruising ability and the potential for 60mpg-plus economy.
Prices will start at £7,630 when the Citigo goes on sale in the UK from June 1 in both three and five door versions, compared with a base price of £7,995 for VW’s Up!. All three VW Group models face plenty of competition, however, not least from Fiat’s just-revised and impressive Panda as well as more established rivals such as Hyundai’s i10 and the Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and its Peugeot-badged stablemate.
Citigo’s lightweight aluminium three-cylinder, 1 litre petrol engines come in three variants: a basic 59bhp unit, an altogether peppier 74bhp version and innovative “Greentech’ variants of both. There is particular appeal – or there should be – to no-frills business users in the ‘Greentech’ models.
The 59bhp ‘Greentech’ emits just 96 grammes per kilometre of CO2 and is rated at an EU combined 68.9mpg, while the 75bhp emits 98 grammes and is credited with 67.3 mpg. So they are on lowest VED, and congestion charge exempt, as well as incurring minimal BIK. There will be no diesels in the range. Skoda group marketing chief Jurgen Stackmann says “they are too expensive for such a price-oriented market sector. The right route is the maximum optimisation of petrol.”
Basic gearbox is a 5-speed manual but there is also an optional automated sequential five-speed gearbox. The Greentech models, which start at £8,890 provide features such as energy recovery and low rolling resistance tyres in addition to engine stop-start and together are claimed to save four-tenths of a litre of fuel per 100 kilometers.
Even entry level ‘S’ models are reasonably well equipped as standard, but £9,490 is needed for the “Elegance” model and its premium trim plus (optional on other models) satnav, hands-free Bluetooth connectivity and multimedia player combined into a single, removable device.
Optional also is one piece of technology which is unusual on such a low-priced car, but unquestionably useful in city driving: a brake assistance system, “City Safe Drive”, which brakes the car automatically if it senses a collision risk below 19mph. (That BCM still managed to nudge over a mock ‘pedestrian’ on a private test track is probably best put down to an isolated electronic glitch.) “What you won’t find, though”, says Stackmann, “is that we’ve wasted any time and money on a lot of gadgetry that never gets used.”
