Skoda Octavia vRS (Mk4) Fast Fleet test – six months in the £30,000 Q‑car

If you stepped from our old Fast Fleet Volkswagen Arteon to our Skoda Octavia vRS you would ask where the additional £9000 – or £15k including options – was spent on the VW. Granted, in plain white our Skoda looked a little too much like a white good, but as with every Octavia vRS we have run on evo’s fleet, this latest example once again left us asking what other family car performs as well for the money.

Like its external colour, KY21 XRF was pretty simple in terms of specification, with its 2-litre turbo four producing 242bhp and driving the front wheels through a manual six-speed gearbox. It might not be the last word in sophistication, but it remains an effective powertrain with an old-school gruffness and a narrow power and torque band that requires your left-sided limbs to be loose and limber to stroke it along and enjoy its strong punch.

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The vRS is some way off today’s 300-horsepower hyperhatches in terms of straight-line performance and dynamic capability, but there’s an honesty to its approach that remains and makes it a car that’s easy to connect with and build a bond with. Proof that a simple package done right is far more rewarding than one that tries overly hard and misses the mark. 

As chariot to staff photographer Aston Parrott it achieved what every evo Octavia has done in the past, namely swallowing entire warehouses of photography kit and still managing to lead a plethora of supercars from location to location. On a long run you could, with a light foot, extract 400 miles from its 45-litre fuel tank, but you should plan on closer to 300 miles if you enjoy driving. With variable damper control and 19-inch wheels as standard, the vRS rarely felt out of its comfort zone and was surprisingly fluid across the countryside, regardless of how much gear it was carrying.

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As Skoda continues to thrive, so its cars become more desirable, both from its range of EVs – the Enyaq is the pick of the crop over VW’s ID.4 and Audi’s Q4 e-tron – and its line-up of traditional ICE models, with the Octavia vRS still one of the best Q‑cars on the market.

If you have something fun or exotic tucked away for high days and holidays and need something else for daily use that’s more practical and more under-the-radar but still has personality and character about it, Skoda’s long-standing vRS remains pretty much untouchable. 

This story was first featured in evo issue 295.