evo India – July 2019

NDIA 2.0 IS APPROACHING.

Skoda will be spearheading

the engineering to localise the

Volkswa gen Group’s MQB-A0

platform for the Indian market, but that’s still

some time away. We can expect the first India

2.0 SUVs to hit our markets only in 2021. Does

that mean Skoda will kick its feet up and wait

till then? Absolutely not. There are a few cars in

the pipeline — an off-road biased Kodiaq Scout

being one, and the updated Superb being the

other. But by far, the most important one is

this, the Karoq. Successor to the Yeti, this will

be Skoda’s entry level SUV in India, at least

until the Kamiq (or whatever the MQB-A0-IN

SUV will be called in India) gets here. A quick

spin in the Czech countryside gave us insight

in to what you can expect.

Driven

Test location: Prague, Czech Republic

Photography: Skoda Auto

Skoda Karoq

The Karoq doesn’t feel too far off the Kodiaq and that isn't

something you should be worried about

The Karoq

screams shrunken

Kodiaq, and that

can only be a good

thing

58 http://www.evoIndia.com | July 2019

I

The first thing that struck me was how

familiar everything was — right from the way

it looked, the way the interior was laid out

and even how it drove. The Karoq screams

shrunken Kodiaq, and that can only be a good

thing. The face is familiar, and you can tell it

apart from the Kodiaq from the more squared

off headlamps and trapezoidal fog lamps. In

profile is where that Karoq looks very obviously

different — it doesn’t have the sheer length of

the Kodiaq. To give you perspective, the Karoq

is 4382mm long, over 104mm shorter than a

Volkswagen Tiguan and a good 315mm shorter

than the Kodiaq. The taillamps are also styled

slightly differently, and can help tell the two

apart. On the inside too, things are familiar.

The Karoq we were driving was specced with

the digital information cluster that the Kodiaq

L&K comes with, and the dash layout was

pretty much the same too — a large, sensitive

touchscreen flanked by vertically placed air-

con vents.

We had the choice of driving one of two

Karoqs — the 1.5-litre petrol or the 2-litre

diesel. The diesel is definitely the more

relevant one, so that’s what I picked. It’s the