How the Skoda vRS Estate passes Henry Catchpole's crucial airport test

The first Fast Fleet car that I could really call my own was a Mk5 Golf GTI back in 2005. White, three-door, manual, cloth interior and 18-inch Monza alloys that needed to give kerbs an extra-wide berth. I loved it and it established The Airport Test.

On landing late at night, probably on the wrong side of London, and faced with a long journey of overnight roadwork diversions to tackle, the GTI was the perfect car to get into. Welcoming and stress free, yet interesting enough to make the last few miles through deserted lanes entertaining. Negotiating passport control and baggage reclaim was infinitely soothed by the thought of settling into that tartan-clad interior.

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Well, as you can tell by this month’s slightly reduced mileage, the Octavia has spent two separate spells parked patiently and thus been subjected to The Airport Test a couple of times. And it’s passed. The green giant is a car I really look forward to returning to.

Heathrow to home after an overnight from Denver was shrugged off in considerably more comfort than I’d found during a sleepless night in seat 19A of a Boeing Dreamliner. And tonight, I’ve just survived the twin evils of the M25 and M1 after dropping a Mazda RX‑7 (FD generation) back to its home. The cabin of this pre-facelift vRS is a relaxing and reassuring place to spend time, even when you’re stationary, for reasons unknown, somewhere near Dartford.

The only slight hiccups have been with the entertainment system, which totally disconnects and reconnects Apple CarPlay after a phone call if you don’t hang up before the other person. It also occasionally refuses to let you turn the volume up or down from about 40 per cent when listening to music or a podcast. The only way around this is to press pause/mute and then bring the volume back up from scratch via the steering wheel control. Odd.

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A direct comparison with the 1.3-litre, twin-rotor, sequentially turbocharged Mazda this evening was fascinating. In terms of outputs, it’s 237bhp and 218lb ft pushing 1310kg for the UK-spec Japanese coupe and 242bhp and 273lb ft pushing 1588kg (as specced – 1513kg standard) for the Czech wagon, so not a million miles apart. But the delivery is so different. The Mazda is much more tractable than I expected, but its considerable performance really comes with higher revs and the second turbo. Getting back into the Skoda, it felt leagues more eager and punchy low down, with much more urgent initial throttle response, but it doesn’t really reward holding on to gears. The upside is that the journey in the Skoda yielded 42.4mpg, which is probably about twice what the Mazda achieved going the other way!

Nonetheless, I’m hoping the vRS’s pistons might free up with more miles. I might also try to seek out some 99 RON rather than 97 as I clearly remember this helping the EA888 engine to rev more freely in a certain white Mk5 GTI a few years ago.

This story was first featured in evo issue 322.

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