Skoda Vision C - see NG

© SkodaAggressive, expressive and evoking emotions – not quite like your typical Skoda!

Just when we thought that until the very end of the world Skoda will offer practical and reasonable cars that have as much in common with any stronger emotions as an old American car with good handling, the Czechs completely turned our opinion about them upside down and proved something that was quite obvious for some time anyway – there are no sure things in the automotive industry, and the only constant thing is change. How did they manage to do that? By presenting an idea for a car that they might be able to produce quite soon – the Vision C. If Skodas look this way in the future and – thanks to CNG – reduce emission levels and cost less to maintain, our perception of this brand’s cars will change drastically. For the better!

But enough of those paeans – time for specifics. The Vision C has a body of a fashionable 4-door coupé, though in truth it’s a 5-door car, as Skoda – faithful to their common sense policy – decided to use a practical tailgate lifted along with glass. Therefore, the Vision C is closer to the Audi A5 Sportback than it is to the Volkswagen CC (formerly Passat CC), and this association is not entirely out of place. When viewed from the sides, this model bears significant resemblance to its distant cousin from Ingolstadt. And it’s not really the first time the Czechs are inspired by the four rings brand – the Octavia also shows some similarities to its high-born relatives. Could it be that Skoda has the ambition to enhance their image so much that they’ll steal customers from Audi, skipping Volkswagen on their way to the top? They probably won’t allow that in Wolfsburg…

© SkodaIt looks quite familiar from this perspective and we don’t necessarily mean similarities to other models of the Czech brand…

We have to say that the Vision C looks really nice. It’s also nice that it’s less harmful to the environment. Just like in the case of the Octavia G-TEC, this new concept car has a 110 PS 1.4 TSI engine that runs equally well on petrol as on CNG. Let’s focus on the latter. Thanks to the aerodynamic body and low weight, the VisionC consumes only 3.4 kg or 5.1 m³ of gas for each 100 km, which is 0.1 kg or 0.3 m³ less than required by the methane-powered Octavia. Logically, carbon dioxide emissions are also lower – 91 instead of 97 g/km – which, according to Skoda, is enough to already meet the CO₂ emission standards that will come into force in the European Union in 2020. And all of this using conventional technology, though not on conventional fuel.

We do hope that a production model (Octavia CC?) based on the Vision C will hit the roads earlier than 2020. We also want to believe that the concept will not be diluted too much along the way. Let’s remember that Skoda has in its recent history shown some amazing visions which turned out to be the not so exciting Rapid and Octavia, so we’re really counting on something more this time. But we’re quite sure of the CNG system. As the concept model was built on the MQB platform, already used in four methane-powered production cars (apart from Octavia it’s also the Golf TGI BlueMotion, the A3 Sportback g-tron and the Leon TGI), why would the serial version use something else? We’ll leave you with this question and take some time to recover as we still can’t quite believe that our hearts started beating faster at the sight of a Skoda…