You know what, not many will tell you that, you don't really need an SUV.
If you're ready to get off your high horse and brush aside your ego, don't want that many ground
clearance millimeters, then all you really need is, this.
Made it.
He's got a point you know, you don't really need an SUV as long a sedan in question is this.
Okay, you know, no matter what, which SUV you buy or have, they're never gonna look
as pretty hands your hands as the Octavia.
Also fun fact, this is the first time, this is a first drive
after that long lockdown being cooped up at our houses.
Oh, yes.
And clearly a lot has changed.
Yeah, a lot has changed and but the Octavia here has also changed, so quite literally,
it's the first drive of the 2021 Skoda Octavia.
Welcome everybody
Yep, first drive, first drive, see what we did there?
A little too much has changed, alright, especially those headlights.
Why aren't they split anymore?
What are you talking about?
Wait, hang on, let's settle this.
What do you mean you don't have split headlamps?
I mean, look at this, the DRLs here, well, they split the headlamps.
But does it matter whether they're split or not?
The first gen Octavia wasn't split and then the
DRL line extends all the way over here to
become the lower line of the big grill.
Now people buy SUVs because of the big grill, you have a big grill, so it looks good.
It looks very good.
So the split headlamps don't matter.
Wait hang, on these lines here matter on the bonnet,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 lines all straight flowing into the nose of the car.
Yeah.
Obviously with the intention of making it look good.
Good and also this has a very important purpose,
which is to make it look sleeker and longer, it's the same funda as wearing
stripes makes a person look slimmer and taller.
You're wearing stripes.
The front is good looking, but the back is also good looking.
The shoulder line, comes all the way from the
front here and enters into the form or a function of a spoiler.
Yeah, integrates into the booth very seamlessly.
And also I really like this exaggerated sportback sloping roofline, sportback, notchback,
notchback, whatever you call it.
The tail light is also as sharp as the front and the whole other design language.
It's the first time we are talking about design on PowerDrift so much.
And here's this new fad that the automotive industry
has gotten into, which is spreading out their brand lettering, the lettering Skoda.
Now the notchback here of course, opening up like a hippopotamus,
gives you 600 litres of boot space.
Oh, if you fold the seats down it's 1555 litres, which is more than your SUV boot space
So there where I'm sitting, by the way Ninja if
I look at the dash, it's looking very pretty, very pretty
that the thing that they've done with the multi layers,
different texture for different layer and
then the suede or alcantara-ish leather that you have, by the way,
everything is soft touch there at the front.
Sitting here in the back, I do feel like an executive, you know, we've got these window blinds
we've got adjustable headrests,
for me of course I can operate it all with my neck here if you can see it, but you've
got adjustable headrest here for the middle person too, just hope that the middle passenger is not very tall.
Now when I look up here, I have these soft, touch sensitive, reading lamps which is very nice.
I've got a rear AC vent.
Glaring omissions will be of course, he does not have ventilated seats, which the competition does get.
It must be a deal breaker for a lot of people because we are a sweaty race.
What I know you are going to be complaining about,
is the fact that there is no sunroof.
According to most Indian families, a sunroof is what makes your car premium.
The sloping roofline is not very close to my head
I still have enough amount of headroom, so there is no sense of claustrophobia inside.
I don't need a sunroof, unless you're a father and your child
comes up to you and says, daddy, we want a sunroof.
If you're a good father, you ask your child not to stick their heads out.
So you be the judge whether the sunroof and ventilated seats are a deal breaker for you or not.
Not just that, the steering wheel is missing a spoke and there's no manual gearbox and the gear selector
is now a switch. A switch people, a switch of all things, what is the world coming to?
And speaking of things that I'm not really a fan of,
it's the whole touchscreen interface that's all over the car, except for these few buttons over here.
There's this whole slider situation happening over here.
So in case you're driving and you want to increase your volume or reduce your volume,
all you have to do is slide your hand over this area over here, and voila,
I like the word you used, slider situation.
And I think Skoda has done a clever job of many things here on the inside,
the way the cabin feels very airy, very spacious, the noise NVH levels are also smoothened out.
One of my favorite features in this is, here MID and
the whole instrument cluster right now is all digital.
So there is an infinite amount of data that is available at your disposal right there.
It's the first drive after the lockdown so it's very difficult to contain our horses
and we have 190 horses, 330Nm of torque, but it's not the numbers you know,
it's how, it's how the power is being put down.
0 to 100 in 7 seconds.
Alright so, gone is the, oh paddle shifter! Gone is the 1.8 liter engine TSI petrol engine.
Now what you have is a 2.0 Litre petrol engine, TSI of course,
the same one that you had in what, the Superb. And also, wait for it...
in the Tiguan Allspace.
And so suddenly it does not feel underpowered, it's a lot of fun to drive it.
You've got precise gear shifting of course happening with a seven-speed DSG.
DSG?
Yes.
No, don't worry about DSG.
Is it not the DQ 200?
It's not the infamous DQ 200, it's the DQ 381
specifically developed for front-wheel-drive cars.
Or SUVs.
No, no, front-wheel-drive cars.
Front-wheel-drive SUVs are SUVs compared to what a monkey is to man.
It's not very wallowy, like an SUV would be, you're still able to do all these things with one hand by the way.
And, so the ride quality is good, it actually just blunts out all the sharp edges on the road with its good amount of damping.
Now let's talk of safety cause I am, yeah, the braking is good by the way, very good, very good,
feedback to braking is nice.
It also has Euro NCAP five-star rating I believe and what how many airbags?
Uh, more airbags than we have friends, both of us combined that is, so that is enough airbags.
Bro, to boil it all down, what you're trying to say is, the whole idea of the SUV is merely
an apparition that we've created, right?
Yeah, it's not a car right.
More of a reflection of a false sense of power and authority, wallowing in the thought that
the high seating position is going to help you dictate your own rules off the road.
That was kind of deep, yeah, let me try something deep as well.
What you're trying to say is, this whole thing is nothing but,
a mere, what you call, conspicuous consumption, so to speak.
We're humans, that's what we do.
You know though, the Octavia four generations later it has made me realize
the same thing that it made me realize in its every iteration, that, and I'm sure of it,
at least for today,
you don't really need an SUV.
We made it all the way till here, didn't we?