Skoda Octavia vRS TDI (2009) CAR review

Skoda’s Octavia vRS has built up something of a cult following. Seems a bit unlikely, but factor in its hot-hatchy character, diesel economy and innate practicality and you’ve got to wonder what its rivals are – especially in estate format. Now it’s been facelifted and comes with VW’s latest common-rail engine. We’re testing it with the dual-clutch DSG paddleshift transmission.

A diesel-powered Skoda estate. Sporty. You sure?

Just take a look at that 0-62mph sprint time: 8.4sec ain’t bad. And it certainly feels quick, accelerating with proper guts and lungeing round the tacho from every up-shift. Course, it’s a diesel so you can’t rag it as you would with a high-revving petrol engine – but then you’d be buying the 198bhp TFSI, and sacrificing 10mpg. Instead you shift up at 4500rpm, before the torque drops off a cliff, and you land straight back in a vat of pulling power.

And speed is only part of the story. The Octavia is also extremely good at going round corners. The steering is light and accurate but no great telegraph of road surface info, so if you only pootle you’ll wonder what the fuss is about. But turn up the wick and the chunky Skoda digs in and drags you through with the kind of verve that gets you grinning. It's not as sharp to steer as a Golf GTI but you can definitely feel the family genes: it’s agile, quicker to change direction than it initially feels and only dissolves into wishy-washy understeer if you’re particularly clumsy.

Okay, you’ve sold me. Now what about that dual-clutch gearbox?

It’s the six-speeder, not the more effective seven-speed dry-clutch unit you can have in the less powerful 1.8 TSI. It works here just as well as it does in other VW Group applications: quick to respond to the paddles, or behaving like a proper auto if you leave the selector to itself.

It’s great on the charge when you’re using the paddles: that way you can always time your shift perfectly and keep yourself in the diesel’s juicy torque-band. Left to its own devices it’s less effective, tending to cling on until you hit the rev limiter, which is neither satisfying nor necessarily the quickest or most controlled way of getting about.

Because this is such a torquey, low-revving slogger (and because it’s noisy at high revs), the dual-clutch gearbox isn’t really the diesel’s greatest ally – there’s no doubt it’ll feel a lot better in the petrol turbo. Unless you do a lot of town driving, you’re probably going to prefer the manual oil-burner. And that’ll save you £1110 too.

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