Skoda is going places. So much so that it might need to revise its production targets upwards, even from a stated goal of making 1.8 million cars per year by 2018. Globally, Skoda has hit a chord with the buying public. Its products mean the same thing everywhere: they’re good value, they’re more spacious than you’d expect and they’re adorned simply inside. It is an image that has resonated in a crisis-ridden world.
The Rapid is its latest model in a roll-out of new product that will include a new Octavia next year and a large SUV after that. But it’s the Rapid that brings some balance to the line-up, sitting as it does in the gap between the Fabia, which we’ll now think of as a conventional supermini, and the Octavia, which has hitherto been small for a Ford Mondeo-segment car, or large for a Focus-sized one. The Rapid – a straightforward, spacious, good value C-segment competitor – will occupy the ‘small family’ ground and push the Octavia up into fleet territory. To that end, it’s average-sized, of average weight and wears the kind of keen price sticker you’d expect to find on a car that is aimed mainly at private buyers.
Before its unveiling in production form, the Rapid’s design was previewed at motor shows by Skoda’s Mission L concept, a rather sleek, chunky-looking hatch that didn’t seem particularly outlandish. Pity, then, that to our eyes the Rapid, once shorn of the concept’s striking white paint and huge alloy wheels, doesn’t quite retain all of that charm. It arrives instead looking rather more staid and without the elegance of an Octavia or the cheekiness of a Yeti. It’s undramatic and inoffensive, mind you, and perhaps that’s the idea. A car that eases itself into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it.
Beneath its skin, things remain just as conventional. At 4.48m long, the Rapid would seem a likely candidate for the Volkswagen Group’s new MQB platform that already underpins the Golf, Audi A3 and Seat Leon. Instead, the Skoda sits on a development of the same underpinnings as the Fabia hatchback. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one wonders whether its torsion beam rear end will rob it of the sophisticated feel of the better cars in this class, including, let’s not forget, other budget-conscious models such as the Hyundai i30 and Kia Cee’d.
One advantage, mind you, is the weight of the Rapid, which comes in at just 1150kg. That’s lighter than the 1175kg claimed kerb weight and considerably lighter than most rivals. As light, in fact, as plenty of current superminis, and this, as we’ll see, has an advantage when it comes to fuel consumption.
At the front, the Rapid is suspended by MacPherson struts, and it has a range of engines offered straight off the shelf and available to all within the VW Group. The range kicks off with a three-cylinder 1.2, before moving to our test car’s 84bhp, four-cylinder, turbocharged 1.2. There’s also a 104bhp variant of the same unit and a 121bhp 1.4 petrol that comes with a dual-clutch automatic gearbox as standard. And there’s one diesel: a 104bhp 1.6 TDI. In our experience to date, the 84bhp 1.2 TSI of our test car represents the range’s sweet spot.
A dead-straight driving position? Check. Chunkily designed and predominantly hard-to-the-touch cabin plastics? Check. Large, analogue dials? Check. Big, round headlight switch? Check and check.
Skoda buyers, according to the company, like things simple. There’s less to go wrong and less to worry about. Skodaphiles getting into a Rapid, therefore, will feel quite at home. The seats are relatively flat but generally comfortable, while the steering wheel is large and the overall ergonomics clearly meet VW Group standards. Our test car’s rather plain radio display can be upgraded to a flashier colour monitor with navigation, but it doesn’t feel worth having here, even if it would add a dash of colour to what is otherwise a fairly austere cabin.
At the price, however, it would be churlish to criticise. Boredom would appear to be designed in, but so is exceptional interior packaging. The Rapid may be based on the Fabia, but when it comes to its interior it’s the Octavia with which it has more in common. The saloon-like rear actually features a big hatch, which opens to reveal a 550-litre boot with a high, wide opening. The rear seats don’t leave a flat floor when folded, but otherwise it’s a practical, versatile cabin. A big one for occupants, too, with rear headroom being the only hint of a compromise. This is a cabin that could accommodate four large adults, easily (with the usual caveat that three abreast in the back is cramped in seemingly any vehicle that comes from this side of the Atlantic).
It is possible to buy a slower Rapid than our 84bhp, 1.2-litre test car, but we would not advise it. Not because it’s bad form to have a car that is incapable of completing a 0-60mph dash in at least 11.2sec, as our test car is, but instead because the base 74bhp three-cylinder engine is unlikely to save you a great deal of money. It costs only a little less, in the way that headline-grabbing base engines do, yet it is expected to return significantly worse economy, is subject to higher road tax and will not retain its value so well. No, for our money, this 84bhp unit is where we’d put our interest.
In the Rapid, this engine makes a quiet and unobtrusive companion, as it does in the other cars in which we’ve tried it. At idle it is near-silent, while above that it spins quietly and easily towards its 6000rpm redline. As we’d hope for in a car aimed at – and let’s be honest here – those who are unenthusiastic about driving, it makes its peak torque figure where it is easily accessed, at just 1500rpm, which makes it easy to get the best from it. Even so, stirring the gearbox is hardly a chore, so easy is the five-speed manual’s shift action.
That five-speeder is common to all Rapids save the seven-speed, DSG-equipped 1.4, whereas most rivals would at some point in the range opt for six-speed manual units. Here in this 1.2 turbo, however, the lack of a sixth ratio makes little difference to the fuel economy, which was a strong 46.7mpg on a touring run and 39.5mpg overall – a decent result given that our testers run with more leaden right feet than most owners will. Don’t be surprised to find that an average economy figure in the mid-40s is achievable if you drive relatively sedately.
Braking performance was also good. The nature of the surface on our dry handling circuit means that, when wet, stopping distances are often longer than on the grippier, less rubbered bespoke wet braking surface. Hence the Rapid wanted fewer metres in which to stop in the ‘wet’. As such, a fine 48.1m plays 50.7m in the ‘dry’. Which was wet.
In our experience, the Rapid is a car that is particularly reactive to the type of engine it is fitted with. Our test car rode, steered and handled considerably better with this 1.2-litre petrol engine than with the 1.6-litre turbodiesel equivalents.
With the heavier diesel lump under the bonnet, the Rapid has an underlying heft to its body movements that this lighter 1.2-litre car does without, leaving this our choice in the range dynamically.
Everything it does, it does with ease – and not only more ease than other models within the Rapid line-up, but also with more ease than most of its rivals. A Kia Cee’d and Hyundai i30 have intentionally had a feel of greater dynamism engineered into them. Ditto a Ford Focus and Vauxhall Astra. The Rapid, meanwhile, goes about its business in a slightly old-fashioned, easygoing way. The control weights are all consistent and light and it rides with medium pliancy, trading a loping gait for some body control but ending up neither truly comfortable nor truly deftly damped.
It displays, in its handling, the same sort of thing it exhibits in so many other areas: middle-of-the-road competence. If that’s where Skoda was aiming, and we strongly suspect it was, then it has hit the mark. It just seems a shame that, for a company whose other products manage to incorporate value for money with a driving experience that feels like some effort has been poured into it, the Rapid feels like a retrograde step compared with, say, the Yeti.
Skoda executives have freely admitted to us that, if you look within the Volkswagen Group at failure rates, breakdown frequency and overall, measurable, tangible quality, Skoda actually fares no better than its VW sibling. Yet when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys, Volkswagen, which sells more fleet cars to higher-mileage, higher-speed and more demanding users, never performs as well as Skoda.
This, Skoda’s engineers and managers think, cannot be expected to last as Skoda grows, so the company is enjoying it while it still can. Certainly the impressive fuel consumption we recorded in the Rapid will please most owners if it appeared on their trip computers. Skoda’s enviable reputation as a maker of practical cars that offer good value for money when new means that residual values should remain as strong as anything within the class, too. Especially when you consider that there isn’t a great deal within the Skoda’s class. Plenty of mid-size hatches have an alluring ‘price from’ figure, but they quickly hop from there to a place the Skoda still manages to undercut.
There are those for whom the Rapid will make perfect sense. We can even imagine ourselves recommending one as a used buy in the near future. But, given where Skoda has been recently, and given the innovation and perceived quality of the products it otherwise offers, the Rapid fails to satisfy quite as much as it potentially could have done.
Instead, the Rapid is the car reduced to the level of a supermarket’s own-label loaf of bread, or an unbranded fridge with no egg holder. Its practicality and value is unquestionable, but there’s nothing to make you want one other than the price on its nose and the inches in its cabin. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that, as enthusiasts, we look for something more in a car.
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