Skoda Octavia RS

A nameplate that needs no introduction, the Skoda Octavia RS, has long been known for its timeless design, precise handling manners, and, most importantly, its performance and driving thrills. 

It is one of those few cars in the country that cater to the enthusiasts without breaking the bank, and its combination of performance and usability is something no other car offers at the price point. No wonder then, that Skoda sold out all the allocated units of the Octavia RS within minutes of opening the order books for it. But in today’s day and age, what makes it so special?

A typical Skoda design with clean lines, but with more aggressive ‘RS’ touches make it clear that this isn’t your standard Octavia. The front is adorned by the familiar Butterfly grille, but it’s finished in black and boasts a RS badge for a more racy look.

There are sleek dual-pod matrix LED headlights along with V-shaped LED DRLs that clearly give the nose an aggressive demeanor.

A sporty front bumper with sharp cuts and creases round off the overall front look.

The Octavia RS boasts a typical sedan silhouette that gives it a clean and streamlined look. But keen eyed viewers will notice that it sits lower than the standard Octavia for better ride and handling manners.

Furthermore, the stance is improved by 19-inch aero-styled alloy wheels. You can’t overlook those red-painted brake callipers which are part of the RS design package. 

At the rear, it features LED taillights and a sleek lip spoiler painted in black. All the badges on the tailgate have also been given a black finish and the overall look is complete with a dual exhaust setup. We have talked more about the Octavia RS’s design in this piece. 

In India, the Skoda Octavia RS is available in five colour options: Mamba Green, Magic Black, Candy White, Race Blue, and Velvet Red. I found that the Magic Black shade looks a bit underwhelming on the car, so much so that most people won’t even recognise it as the Octavia RS, while the Mamba Green shade sits on the other end of the spectrum and grabs a lot of attention.

The cabin of the Octavia RS doesn’t feel immediately special as the overall dashboard layout is similar to the standard Octavia. There are only some visible changes to keep up with the overall sporty theme: an all-black theme with red accents, a RS steering wheel, metallic pedals, and sport seats that are upholstered with a combination of Suede and leatherette.

The quality of materials is top notch; it isn't luxury-car premium, but feels rich with different textures. The suede on the dashboard feels sporty while the plastics have a smooth finish.

Fit and finish is on point, as you’d expect from an European car, and I particularly liked the feeling of the gear selector. It felt solid and had a small throw with a satisfying heft, whenever you switched between drive and reverse. 

Front Seats

For me, the sports seats really stood out with their combination of materials, but even more so, it was the way they made me feel – like I wasn’t sitting on it, but rather, I was a part of it.

It gets powered adjustment with memory settings, which makes it easier to adjust and the driving position is really sporty.

However, getting inside the car itself can be a task as the car is super low, which means you have to duck a lot to enter. But once inside, the comfort factor is on point with supportive side bolsters, a front central armrest and a massaging function in the seats. The steering also adjusts for tilt and telescopic steering adjustment.

Rear Seats

Just like the front seats, it takes some effort to get inside the rear of the Octavia RS. But for a performance car of this caliber, the rear seats are actually usable. Space-wise, a tall person can sit behind a person of an average height of around 5’8” and the only parameter in which they will feel a bit restrained is height. Otherwise, knee room and even foot room is acceptable. 

But personally, I wouldn’t want to travel long distances in the back seat of the Octavia RS due to the sense of space being limited. The front seats practically block the entire frontal view and there’s no sunroof either, which means passengers can feel a bit claustrophobic. It might not be an issue for everyone, but is definitely something to consider. 

Practicality

The Skoda Octavia RS’ cabin has enough practicality for your daily drives, and even if you’re out on a roadtrip with the family, the storage spaces are just about adequate. All four doors have 1-litre bottle holders, there are two cupholders in the central console, one of which has a removable slot that can store your phone too.

The glovebox is big enough to store a 1-litre bottle, while smaller items like a powerbank can be stored in the front armrest.

There’s also a sunglass holder in the roofliner.

Rear passengers have seat back pockets with dedicated slots for the phone, a device holder that can be used for mounting a phone or tablet and watching a show, while your coffee mugs can go in the two cupholders in the rear central armrest.

There’s also a removable tray that sits on the central tunnel, which has two adjustable cup holders and an additional space that can be used to store loose items.

Charging Options

For charging, apart from the wireless phone charger, you get four type-C charging ports (two at the front and two at the back). 

Boot Space

Thanks to its notchback style tailgate, the Octavia RS offers a generous boot space of 600 litres. The boot is powered so it opens without any effort, and once you open it, there’s more than enough space to store multiple large suitcases. The space is wide and deep, and can easily accommodate four people’s luggage for a long road trip. 

You also have open access to the boot from the rear seats in case you’ve kept something like a mini fridge and want to access some cold drinks. And in case you want to store large items, the seats do have a 60:40 split and can be folded down to accommodate that.

The Skoda Octavia RS isn’t a car you buy for its features, and yet, it still gets everything you would expect from a car at this price point. The main 13-inch infotainment touchscreen system takes centre stage and I have no complaints from it whatsoever. It has nice graphics, a crisp resolution and has big icons, which makes the screen easy to use.

There are no physical controls for the climate control, sadly, and you have to use the screen to change temperature. The good thing is, you don’t have to go through multiple menus to access them, as they are permanently present towards the bottom of the screen. 

This screen also gets wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which is easy to connect and works flawlessly.

The feed for the 360-degree camera is also displayed on this screen only, and unlike the mass market Skodas, the camera quality is superb. It makes parking the car a lot easier in traffic, has dynamic guidelines to go with the feed, and even gets a feature to clean the camera. 

The driver also gets a fully 10.25-inch fully digital screen. It gets multiple layouts, including a digital and analogue display, and I personally prefer the old school dials which look really sporty.

You can also customise it for other information like trip details, fuel efficiency, and media display to be shown alongside the speedometer.

For comfort, the seats get a massaging function and I enjoyed using it after a long day of shooting. There’s also heated seats, which are rather useless in India until and unless you live up north, and I would’ve loved if the seats had ventilation instead. 

10 airbags, electronic stability control, ABS with EBD, ISOFIX mounts, and Level-2 ADAS features like lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control make up the Octavia’s safety suite.

While having ADAS features gives you peace of mind on well marked roads and open expressways, I don’t like the fact that they have to be turned off every time you start the car. In case you forget, these features are a little sensitive for our chaotic Indian driving conditions and can cause an accident instead of avoiding one.

As for crash test rating, the Octavia RS has a full 5 star rating from Euro NCAP.

Engine and Performance

Propulsion duties are performed by a 2-litre turbo-petrol engine. The detailed engine specifications are as follows:

DCT - Dual clutch automatic transmission

Compared to the old Octavia RS 245 which used to make 245 PS, the new Octavia RS makes 20 PS more power, while the torque output remains unchanged. The Octavia RS shares its specs with the Volkswagen Golf GTI. If you’re curious about the sedan’s performance in comparison to the hot hatch, we’ve compared them in detail. 

The car has multiple drive modes: Eco, Normal, Sport and Individual.

Drive Experience

In the city, the Octavia RS drives like your regular sedan. It is very unassuming, be it in terms of refinement, response, power and even gear shifts. The engine is silent and you barely hear it working. 

At lower RPM, it builds up speeds smoothly, creeps from a standstill gently, and even a new driver would get comfortable behind the wheel. But once you find a patch of open road, the Octavia RS switches into a gear (both metaphorically and literally) that will put a smile on your face. You cross 2,500 RPM and the wave of torque that hits you takes you to triple digit speeds in no time, and before you know it, you’ll be doing speeds for which you’ll have to pay fines.

The performance is quick, but not uncontrollable. And even if you are brave enough and turn the ESC into its sports setting, the car remains stable and in control. The 0-100 time of 6.4 seconds might not feel that alluring in our generation of electric vehicles and their instant torque, but the drive experience has a sense of engagement and occasion in it. 

The transmission is smooth at slow speeds, but lighting fast when you’re pushing the car. I really enjoyed using the paddle shifters too, which let me downshift aggressively as I approached a corner.

The only thing that I wish the Octavia RS did more of is make sounds. It isn’t entirely muted, but the sounds are very filtered, and you only get some pops and bangs on downshifts.

 But as far as the engine and transmission is concerned, the overall tuning is such that you can use the car for your daily commutes to the office, and also take it for an adrenaline-filled spin on the weekends.

Ride and Handling

The Skoda Octavia RS is a car that has specifically tuned components that make it handle better than the standard Octavia. So while the car is great around corners, it won’t be your best friend over bad roads.

Regular speedbreakers, cracks in the roads and even small potholes are dealt with fairly well. The ride quality isn’t jarring over those imperfections, but if there's a sharp depression, a sudden bump, or a rough road, you will feel the impact inside. If you’re young with no back and neck problems, it won’t be a problem, but if you plan to do road trips with the family with your parents or grandparents in the back, they won’t be too happy with you picking this car for that journey. 

Surprisingly, I never managed to scrape the car from below, even over the humongous speedbreakers that we have in Pune. But it would still be best to exercise caution if you are unsure about a particularly large stone or sharp speedbreaker. As for highway manners, that’s what the Octavia RS is made to do; cover long distances at speeds. I drove the car on the Mumbai-Pune expressway, which has a patch of bumpy concrete roads as soon as you enter from Pune, and yet, the car kept me comfortable. The vertical movement and the jolts were well controlled and even over a sudden undulation or expansion joint, the car didn’t feel uncomfortable.

It masks speeds so well that you could be doing highly illegal speeds and still feel like you’re sitting much below the permissible speed limit. At those speeds, changing lanes feels easy, the car remains planted and you can find gaps between slow moving traffic confidently. 

Around a corner too, the precision of the steering wheel, the balance of the chassis, and the controlled body movement nudges you to push the car harder than your own ability might allow. At this price point, there’s only one other car that offers you this level of controlled dynamic prowess, but it is nowhere as practical and usable as this, which makes the Octavia even more special.

When the Skoda Octavia VRS was first launched in 2004, it gave birth to an entire generation of enthusiasts by introducing them to turbo-petrol performance and sports car-like dynamics at a relative budget. And in today’s day and age of hybridisation and electrification, it is keeping those enthusiasts alive. 

For its price tag, the Octavia VRS isn’t the fanciest, most premium or even the quickest car you can buy today. There are entry-level luxury cars and EVs from China that will give you those things. It is a one car garage for that petrolhead that needs to accommodate the family occasionally, but also wants the performance and handling that you associate with a sports car, without inching closer to the Rs 1 crore mark. And for that specific need, there is no other car that fits better than the Octavia VRS. 

Other Cars To Consider

Volkswagen Golf GTI

Reasons to consider

• Sounds slightly better when pushing the car

• Cabin feels slightly more driver-oriented

Reasons to ignore

• Nowhere near as practical

• Smaller boot space

• Less features

Mini Cooper S

Reasons to consider

• Quirky design grabs attention

• Sounds a lot better

• Interior feels unique

• Entry-level variants are more affordable

Reasons to ignore

• Not as practical

• Rear seats access and space is compromised

• Not as quick or dynamic