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Of the handful of five-star road test verdicts awarded by Autocar in recent years, none surprised me as much as that for the latest Skoda Superb Estate. The thing is, I’m not really sure why.

Of course, our testers evaluate cars on a fitness-for-purpose basis, on which this big wagon has always scored highly, offering tremendous value for money, pleasant enough driving, reasonable comfort and more luggage space than your local Big Yellow Self Storage facility, but a big, diesel-engined Skoda estate still seemed like an unlikely entry into the rarefied air of “brilliant, unsurpassed; all but flawless”.

Well, I suppose the brilliance of a car such as the Superb Estate only really shines through when you use it every day for everything life and work might throw at you – and so that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing for the next few months. 

This Superb is classed as a new model generation (the fourth), although its underpinnings – the Volkswagen Group MQB platform – and powertrains remain familiar. The key point is that it was developed alongside the new VW Passat but with Skoda rather than Volkswagen taking the development lead, which explains why the few compromises that previously affected the Superb have been overcome this time around.

Speccing our car was easy: I’ll have it in the exact five-star form from the road test, please. Estate body, 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel engine and mid-range SE L trim. The only real variety comes from the options list: Graphite Grey metallic paint rather than Ice Tea Yellow, an 18in spacesaver spare wheel (because potholes) and an electric towbar, just in case I suddenly get bored of writing and decide to open a burger van.

As such, this car costs £41,675. Skoda is definitively no longer a budget brand, but given the Superb’s size, that still represents tremendous value for money to me. Being absolutely honest, had I been speccing a Superb for myself, I would have been reluctant to select the diesel.

But while diesels are in seemingly inexorable decline, they remain a terrific option for a certain use case. Which perhaps explains why there seems to be something of a mini-renaissance of firms offering diesels, particularly within the Volkswagen Group.

There’s even a mini-renaissance of diesels on our fleet: magazine editor Rachel Burgess recently took delivery of an Audi A3 Sportback (Autocar, 31 December 2024) powered by the same 148bhp engine as this Superb.

The two are similarly priced, too: it will be interesting to see if the Audi hatchback’s premium sheen or the Skoda estate’s practicality wins out. In terms of ensuring the Superb gets seen in an ideal light, I have several long journeys lined up and a conga line of colleagues with large items to move forming behind me.

And that should be a treat: during road testing, the Superb managed 765 miles on a single tank of fuel, the sort of number that’s 

incomprehensible to someone who has been running electric cars in recent years. This is actually a car for that person who claims they can't buy an EV just in case they need to drive from Inverness to Truro without stopping. When said apocryphal driver does reach Truro, they will also be able to buy all the Cornish pasties.

This estate's boot capacity is a whopping 690 litres even before you fold down the rear seats, and the boxy shape makes it really practical to use. How big is 690 litres in reality?

Let me give you an example. The Superb arrived with me shortly before Christmas, so one of my first journeys in it was to visit family in the West Country for the holidays (yes, there was some Chris Rea...). 

When I loaded up the car for the trip, my bags of presents didn't even fill half the boot. What I had thought was a festive bounty suddenly made me feel like Scrooge McDuck.

At least I was a comfortable miser: on initial acquaintance, the interior of the Superb is glorious. It being a traditional estate, the driving position is nice and low, and while the infotainment touchscreen is big (13in) it's well placed and nicely complemented by physical switchgear. In particular, I m a big fan of the multitunctional

Smart Dials, which control various infotainment and heating controls. Undoubtedly, the Superb is a large, long car. When parked, the rear of the boot probably sits in a separate postcode from the bonnet.

But it's still relatively narrow and is proving surprisingly easy to navigate. I can even fit it snugly into the ridiculously small parking spaces outside my 1960s house. My initial impressions are good, then, but that isn't really a surprise: this is a five-star car, after all.

Hopefully I won't find any hidden gremlins in the coming months that will give me pause to reconsider that verdict.

Update 2

Our diesel-engined Skoda Superb Estate has done a good job convincing me that I’m well suited to driving electric cars.

Counterintuitive as this sounds, I mean that as a compliment. While diesels are not exactly in vogue, they still have a real use case in the right circumstances.

I’ve had to make a number of long trips away from my south-west London home in recent weeks, and it’s notable how much the fuel economy improves once the engine has warmed up and I escape the capital’s congested roads.

On an A-road or motorway, the Superb is so pleasurable to drive, relaxed and effortless. And over a long trip, that fuel economy will just keep on getting better. I’m averaging 52.5mpg so far, but at a relaxed cruise I’ve regularly seen well over 65mpg on the gauge.

Combine that with a massive fuel tank and the real-world range is easily eclipsing 760 miles without any real effort. It means I’ve been making several three-plus-hour trips covering several hundred miles in a car that has absolutely no need to stop.

Which is a big adjustment from running a number of EVs recently, wherein such trips tend to require at least one quick charging stop for confidence. A refreshing change, then? Well, the catch is that I often still need to stop, even if the Superb doesn’t. It might be for the toilet, because I’m thirsty, or I need to stretch my legs, or I’ve just remembered yet another bit of overdue copy I need to file.

So I find myself sheepishly stopping while the Superb quietly gives off ‘we’ve only done 200 miles; I was just getting warmed up’ vibes. It’s a bit humiliating to realise that I’m now the weak link.

Oddly, I’ve also become as obsessed with range as I would in an EV. Clearly, with the ability to do 760 miles, I don’t need to maximise the Superb’s efficiency. But I’ve taken my quest to squeeze the most out of a battery and applied it to this diesel.

I’m using all those EV ef ciency tips to eke out every drop of fuel. As I write, I’m 510 miles into a tank, and the indicated range suggests I’ve got 305 miles left. Is a ridiculous 800 miles from a single tank on? Let’s find out.

Update 3

I’m running a Skoda on the Autocar fleet, and that apparently means I’m contractually obliged to discuss its Simply Clever features. You know what I’m on about: those not-so-secret features designed to make life easier.

Umbrellas in doors, ice scraper in the fuel cap, parking ticket clip on the windscreen etc. The ice scraper has helped me on a cold morning, I’ve clipped things to the windscreen and the umbrellas have saved me from getting wet.

Although my most notable discovery is that the new Volkswagen Passat is so closely related to the Superb (development of the two was led by Skoda) that it also gets them. Is that a first for a Volkswagen? I think it might be.

In summary, then: Simply Clever features are present and correct here and as simple and clever as ever. But most Skoda fans probably know that already. So that’s mostly all I have to say about them.

Besides, it’s other elements of the Superb that I’ve come to marvel at for simplicity and cleverness. So let’s talk Skoda’s Smart Dials. Yes, strap yourself in for a thriller. These three dials are at the bottom of the dashboard, and each controls a range of heating, comfort and infotainment features. They’re cleverly multifunctional: pressing a dial changes what it controls.

The dials on the le and right cycle through controls for the cabin temperature and the seat heating and cooling for their respective sides of the car (if you hold down the driver-side dial when on the heating mode, it syncs the vent temperatures). The central dial can be programmed for up to four functions, including the direction of the air vents, infotainment volume, driving modes and map zoom.

Each dial contains a little digital display showing you what operation is selected at that moment. And, frankly, they’re brilliant. They’re clear, easy to find when you’re driving and pleasingly tactile: they’ve got a nice feel and click neatly when you turn them.

Best of all, in an era when physical controls are under threat as more and more functions are operated via touchscreens, the Smart Dials feel like a really neat solution.

One reason car designers have cited for putting controls on touchscreens is that modern cars now have hundreds more functions than they used to, and if each of those functions had a physical control, they would end up with a dashboard so full of buttons and dials that it would look like a plane cockpit.

Frankly, I would be all for that, but I can understand the argument against. Then again, that argument is rendered somewhat moot by the use of physical multifunction controls. Here are physical controls that combine to control up to 10 separate functions in a way that’s really easy and intuitive.

There’s no second guessing about which sub-menu you need and none of the uncertainty that comes from not knowing if you’ve actually pressed the right bit of the screen. The Smart Dials are a usability delight, and truly simply clever. Sadly for me, this could be the last time for a while I get to wax lyrical about such features, because I’m about to wave goodbye to the Superb.

It’s not actually leaving the Autocar fleet yet, but since we’re running it because our road testers bestowed an ultra-rare five-star verdict upon it, they’ve insisted that they should be treated to the keys for a few months.

Given the mileages they rack up, frankly they will get more use out of the Superb’s amazing long-haul capabilities than I will, so I’ve very reluctantly agreed to hand the car over. And I will be intrigued to see what more they learn about it. One con dent prediction, though: they will love the Smart Dials.

Update 4

We don’t give five-star road test verdicts often at Autocar. Indeed, 2024 qualified as an unusually fertile year with just three – for the Porsche 911 S/T, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI Estate.

As the road tester who wrote the Superb verdict, I was looking forward to spending more time with the big Skoda. At the same time, there was a bit of uncertainty nagging at me: it’s just a collection of Volkswagen MQB  bits, so is it really that good?

Happily, any doubt melted away as soon as I picked up this car. The Superb isn’t exceptional because it brings you driving ecstasy on a special road. Instead it does the ordinary so well, and in a world where most modern cars make you adapt to their quirks and learn to live with poorly integrated systems, this one is just so instantly relaxing.

The seats and driving position are great. The response of the controls and the gearbox are just so. The whole user interface is clear and just works, the useful ADAS functions do what they’re supposed to and the mandatory annoying ones are a cinch to turn off.

Even on passive dampers it rides well, and not to the detriment of handling: the steering is great and the whole car rotates quite nicely into bends. If you behave, this diesel will even do 60mpg on a run.

It’s one of very few cars where my ‘reviewer brain’ can switch off and I just enjoy the drive. My time with it has been perfectly timed with my house move. I let a removals firm do the heavy lifting, but the Superb came in very handy for runs back and forth to sign paperwork and to ferry smaller items from Kent to Oxfordshire. At an average of 53mpg,

I could do several of those 230-mile round trips on the same 66-litre tank. There’s not much more to it than ‘big, practical car is big and practical’. I’m not usually a fan of electric tailgates, because it’s quicker to open one manually, but here I was thankful for hands-free operation when loading the boot with boxes.

The only annoyance is that this car doesn’t have a variable-height boot floor, so there’s a step when you fold the rear seats. That unticked option box aside, I’m rather enjoying life with the Superb. I’m starting to see more of them on the road, too. It seems people are cottoning on to how good it is. A five-star car? I’d still say so.

Illya Verpraet

Update 5

Having somehow spent no time at all in the current-generation Superb, I’ve just put 1720 miles on our long-termer in a week. How did that happen? I’d initially planned to get the Eurostar to Paris to interview Renault Group CTO Philippe Krief, but then Aston told us it would be launching the Vantage Roadster in Salzburg later that same week.

The clear play, then, was to link the jobs by road: car beats train beats plane. I scanned the Autocar fleet for an accomplice. Prise the Bentayga from Rachel? Tempting. But the V8’s fuel economy might put the publisher out of business. Steve’s Wrangler? Similar story, only with ride quality as rough as a bear’s backside.

I thought Kris’s BMW 120 M Sport might be interesting, because these premium hatchbacks are now so grown-up that they’ve got decent touring chops. But then I remembered our 2.0 TDI Superb Estate, which put the matter to bed. A couple of months ago I drove the new Merc E450d Estate to the Alps.

The German is a colossus – in performance, price and capability. It also costs £90k if you get the spec you want, which is more than twice the price of our Superb SE L a er options. But is the Mercedes double the car? Objectively no, of course not. The Superb has the same number of seats and a bigger boot, will slickly run Android Auto or Apple CarPlay and wins a clear victory in efficiency.

Where the E450d, with its 369lb six-pot turbo diesel, will return 45mpg at a 75mph cruise, the four-pot Skoda does 55mpg at 85mph. With a 66-litre tank, that’s 798 unbroken miles in just over nine hours, versus 697 miles in the Merc, with a little longer in the hot seat.

The Superb crunches big distances. This latest one has decent chairs, too, plus generous adjustability in the steering column, so it really is comfortable. I’d also say the Skoda has an easier cabin to rub along with.

It is not lavish, but the E-Class has an awful lot of digital real estate, which I’ve never liked, especially at night. The Skoda settles well on the motorway too, helped by its wheelbase and the lack of a need to be ‘sporty’. All that being said, money-no-object I’d take the Merc in a heartbeat. It’s one of the great tool cars of this era. But if money mattered, I’d feel pretty pleased with myself if I had a Superb.

Richard Lane

Final update

The Superb had been away from me for a while, getting passed around the team for all to experience its brilliance. It did a long stint with photographer Jack Harrison, munching some serious miles driving all around the country at an average of 54.7mpg (that’s a brim-to-brim calculation, although the digital readout is dead accurate).

He managed to get 868 miles out of a tank on one occasion, which is brave on his part and impressive on the car’s. He reports that there’s very little about it that he doesn’t like, it swallows his gear with ease and it’s great for doing car-to-car photography, because the boot is big and the ride is soft. It’s also worth mentioning that everyone, short or tall, seems to get on with the seats.]

Anyway, I needed it back recently so I could drive to Belgium to see my parents and pick up a big mirror, some artwork and other odds and ends. Not exactly a challenge for the Superb, but somehow it turned out to be slightly fraught. When I picked up the car from our office, I immediately thought: “Am I going mad, or is the ride significantly worse and the engine noisier than I remember?” It occurred to me that I had better check the tyre pressures and engine oil when I got home.

Indeed, someone had set the pressures to 3.0 bar all round when they’re supposed to be 2.5 bar and the oil was down at the bottom of the dipstick (it has an actual dipstick – praise be!).

Good news for my sanity and legitimacy as a car tester, less so for the car. I decided to leave the pressures for a while to see if this would make a difference to the fuel economy, but topping up the oil was more urgent – and surprisingly difficult.

A sticker in the engine bay informs you that it wants Volkswagen-approved 0W-20 oil but, even though this EA288 2.0-litre diesel engine is a very common unit, such oil doesn’t appear to exist. First I tried a big petrol station – nothing. Then I called in to a VW and Skoda dealer on my way to the Eurotunnel – “sorry, we’re out”. At this point, I was running late for my train, so I pressed on.

By the time I got there, a warning came on the screen that I should top up the oil. I then tried the first fuel station out of Calais. Again, every type of oil under the sun bar this one. At this point, I gave up and bought a bottle of VW-spec 0W-30, since I reckoned it was close enough and better than carrying on with insufficient oil.

In the manual, it says that the engine may consume up to 0.5 litres per 600 miles and a bit more in the first 3000 miles. That’s fair enough, but you would expect it to come with a top-up bottle in the boot, especially when the oil you need can be hard find.

I also note that its first service is due at two years or 20,000 miles, which seems awfully long to me. It’s been shown time and again that these long intervals are just a way to reduce the running costs for fleet managers and people who keep a car only a few years. If you intend to keep it longer, you would be wise to do it at least every year instead and cut the mileage interval in half.

I arrived in Belgium with no further incident and with the trip computer showing 62.6mpg. For the way back, I returned the tyre pressures to the correct 2.5 bar, which made no difference to the fuel consumption that I could make out but did take the sting out of the ride. And so our time with the Superb comes to an end. In my job as a road tester, test cars come and go all the time.

With most of them, I’m glad to have had the experience and don’t look back, but with this one I’m sad that it’s departing. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it is just so good, so useful, so complete. It does almost everything so effortlessly.

Of course there were a few minor niggles. Towards the end, it developed a glitch where the volume control would stop working if you switched between Apple CarPlay and the native so ware a few times. Switching to the radio and back to CarPlay would reset it.

I don’t love how you have to twist the gear selector and I wish the car had standard cruise control and a more intelligent auto hold system. But that’s all extremely minor stuff. Overall it has been brilliant. 

I won’t repeat the five-star road test verdict here, because it still applies, but in short, it’s not just that this car is big, practical and fuel ef cient, it’s that it also feels luxurious inside, rides well, has a minimal number of annoyances and, when you point it at a corner, actually handles well too.

When a major car maker stops for a moment trying to be desperately trendy with too many flashing lights, cartoon characters dancing across enormous screens and ‘sporty’ suspension for the sake of it, it sometimes results in a really good, fit-for-purpose car. The Superb is that car.

Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI Estate SEL specification

Prices: List price new £39,705 List price now £40,795 Price as tested £41,675 Options: Electric towbar £1105, Graphite Grey paint £680, spacesaver spare wheel £185

Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 55.6mpg Fuel tank 66 litres Test average 55.3mpg Test best 60.6mpg Test worst 51.1mpg Real-world range 803 miles

Tech highlights: 0-62mph 9.3sec Top speed 137mph Engine 4 cyls in line, 1968cc, turbocharged, diesel Max power 148bhp at 3000-4200rpm Max torque 266lb ft at 1600-2750rpm Transmission 7-spd dual-clutch auto, FWD Boot capacity 690 litres Wheels 8.0Jx18in, alloy Tyres 235/45 R18 94W, Bridgestone Turanza T005 Kerb weight 1678kg

Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £485pcm CO2 135g/km Service costs Oil top-up £35 Other costs None Fuel costs £1358.58 Running costs inc fuel £1358.58 Cost per mile 12 pence Faults None

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Common logic holds that the Le Mans 24 Hours is at its most magical at night. And sure, it’s incredible watching hypercars blast past in the dark at close to 200mph – but the rest of it can be a bit much.

On Saturday night, the Circuit de la Sarthe morphs into a big party venue, and it can be an overwhelming sensory experience. The humidity that can build over Le Mans in mid-June clings on after nightfall, making it stifling and uncomfortable.

And there’s a mass of humanity everywhere, drinking, partying and swirling in and out of the spectator zones, funfair and campsites. With all this and the bright lights, loud noises and smells of various foods being cooked, it’s loud, bustling and boisterous.

For someone who isn’t much of a partying type, it’s a lot, and I’m always relieved to escape the mayhem.

Besides, there’s a much better time to enjoy Le Mans. You just need to get up early: because compared with Saturday night, Sunday morning at Le Mans is a different world – and, in my mind, an immeasurably better, more pleasurable one.

The humidity fades overnight, and as the sun breaks under clear skies, it’s usually fresh and welcoming. And, aside from the 50-plus high-powered race cars roaring round, it’s peaceful.

The throngs of fans have melted away, aside from a handful of fellow early starters (and the odd late-night reveller asleep on the ground), so you have your run of prime spectator spots.

And the spectating is amazing. On Saturday night the race is essentially the backdrop to a huge party, but on Sunday morning it regains centre stage. It’s a time for purists.

By this stage, the ‘story’ of the race has been established, so you know which cars to keep an eye on and which gaps to monitor.

Cool temperatures mean fast lap times, and even if the race has settled down, it’s far too early for anyone to back off. You can study each driver’s lines, listen to the differences in engine notes and appreciate the striking difference in performance between the classes.

It’s also a great time to realise just how tough this race is. By dawn on Sunday, the cars are approaching two-thirds distance, so there are ‘only’ nine or 10 hours left. That doesn’t sound much in the context of a 24-hour race, but that’s still five grands prix.

That’s when you appreciate how challenging a 24-hour race is and what an experience it is to witness – especially in a calm, quiet moment of solitude.

In a few hours, the temperature will ramp up, the spectator areas will start to fill in readiness for the finish and Le Mans will start to feel like one of the world’s great mass spectator events again. My tip: get up early and enjoy the calm while you can. 

The UK’s biggest van seller, Ford, is also the biggest laggard on tough government-mandated EV sales targets when it comes to the main players, new figures show.

So far this year, Ford has sold 2443 electric light commercial vehicles (LCVs), equating to 5.4% of its 45,190 LCV total and some way short of the 16% required by the ZEV mandate, according to EV think tank NewAutoMotive.

By contrast, the nation's second biggest van seller, Volkswagen, is running at 19% so far this year, thanks mainly to the commercial version of the ID Buzz. Vauxhall in third has an EV share of 17%.

Overall electric van sales to the end of May hit 6877, putting EVs at 7.6% of the 133,798 total in the sub-3.5-tonne category, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

Van makers continue to struggle to persuade buyers to make the shift to cleaner transport, being thwarted by higher prices, range anxiety and a lack of penalties for buyers choosing diesel again.

There are some benefits for buyers, though. The government announced in February that it would extend its Plug-in Van Grant (PiVG) for another year, worth £2500 off the cost of smaller vans and £5000 of larger models up to 4.25 tonnes.

The cost of an electric van is also 100% claimable from a company’s taxable profits.

The SMMT is pushing the government to do more to persuade business users to switch, including investing in a more van-suitable charging infrastructure and giving preferential treatment for depot grid connections.

However, in April the government made a raft of changes to the ZEV mandate that would take some of the pressure off van makers, in effect reducing the 16% target this year. 

The top-line figures essentially stay the same and the 2035 date remains for 100% zero-emission sales. But this year, for example, van makers can halve their EV target by promising to overdeliver in future years up to 2030. That promise was extended to include sales in 2027 through 2030, with the target dropping to 10% by 2029.

Van makers also don’t have to show any improvement in CO2 emissions within their ICE fleet between 2030 and 2035. Unlike with cars, they don’t have to hybridise during that period.

Perhaps the most useful change, depending on the brand, is the ability to use excess electric car sales to count within their electric van target, with one electric car counting as 0.4 electric vans.

The deal works the other way too, with one electric van counting as two electric cars.

Other credits, including potentially for vans with vehicle-to-grid capability (meaning they can feed energy back to the grid during peak periods), are in discussion, according to the government.

The changes, which include greater flexibilities for those selling cars, “provide short-term flexibility to ensure that jobs and investment remain in the UK as we pivot towards electric vehicles,” said transport secretary Heidi Alexander in April.

The danger of relaxing the rules is that the already sluggish electrification of vans will slow further, worrying those companies that have banked on legislation driving up the electric share of the market.

“The latest SMMT figures expose a widening disconnect in the UK’s transition to electric vehicles,” said Matt Hawkins, UK head of Flexis, a commercial EV company formed by Renault, Volvo and logistics firm CMA CGM. “While sales are growing, the pace is far too slow.”

Flexis, along with Geely-owned Farizon and Kia, are launching electric vans targeting the key 2.5 tonne-3.5-tonne segment currently ruled by the Ford Transit Custom.

Ford and Stellantis are currently hedging their bets by adapting ICE vehicle platforms to take battery-electric powertrains.

That saves on development and production costs but makes for an uneasy comparison on the website configurator, where the EV is clearly more expensive with none of the space or tech benefits that a new EV-specific platform.

For example, the diesel Transit Custom starts at £33,350 (excluding VAT) while the cheapest E-Transit Custom is more than £10,000 pricier – something the £2500 PiVG only partly addresses.

Stellantis’s fuel-cell electric vans are even more expensive: the newly launched Vauxhall Movano 4250 Hydrogen costs from £67,221 (excluding VAT) compared with £51,780 for the equivalent BEV and £35,420 for the equivalent diesel.