Skoda Octavia vRS review

Everything is just so. The materials are good, with Alcantara used in pleasant but not OTT quantities, while the lumbar-supported, diamond-quilted sports seats hug you nicely. The facelift brings a light cosmetic change too, with increased use of hot red contrast stitching and more vRS logos dotted along the deep black surfacing. Simply put: it’s a nice place to be.

The steering wheel has three spokes, ousting the curious two-spoke item used in the stock Octavia. Crucially its buttons are actual buttons, not weird touch sensitive pads – like those fitted to the Golf GTI until VW came to its senses – so you won’t accidentally turn the heated wheel on (or off) during sterner-faced cornering. The little metal scroll wheels nestled among those buttons are tactile, too, and make for excellent resting points for your thumbs.

And the infotainment? 

You guessed it – it’s touchscreen heavy in here. Which will surprise, delight or slightly irritate you, depending on your disposition. Much like the GTI, there are gritted-toothed-helmsmith operations – like turning off the ESP – buried behind half a dozen menu prods. Painful. Luckily VW Group has upped its game lately, meaning you can now punch in shortcuts for things like the driving assist menu. Happy days.

Once you’re used to where everything lives within the standard-fit screens – a 13in item in the middle handling satnav, music, driving modes and aircon, and the 10in Virtual Cockpit dials (with much customisation) ahead of you – it’s all a doddle.

If you’re worried about fiddling with the aircon while driving, we’re with you. But Skoda’s built some extremely common sense commands into the voice control. ‘My hands are cold’ will turn the heated wheel on and pump warm air out of the vents, for instance. It sounds unbelievably cheesy, but it works about a thousand times better than BMW’s gesture control or shouting ‘Hey Mercedes’ at your dashboard. Skoda successfully turns chintzy tech into something useful; who’d have thought it…

Is it spacious?

In the back, there’s a tonne more room for the legs and possessions of passengers than you’ll find in other hot hatches, while there’s two USB sockets and the seat-back pockets have two sections – one magazine sized, one ready to snugly envelop a phone.

Head further back and the boot is 600 litres in the hatch, or 640 in the estate. BIG, in other words, with a Golf offering less than two thirds than that. The Octavia costs similar money but acts like it’s a size above.