Rapid Shifting: Skoda Octavia RS Wagon
There’s something to be said for being the “little” brother or sister, in that unused and brand nwe stuff comes your way. With Skoda becoming part of the VW Group in 2000, the door was opened to taking advantage of the family lineage and sourcing from the parts bin, both brand new and “hand me downs” that are virtually brand new. Skoda’s undergone a resurgence, as a result and one of the key parts to that has been the Octavia. It’s a been a delightful week with the top of the range RS wagon, now in its third iteration.
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Turbos and four cylinder engines go together like whisky and ice. Skoda’s married a turbo to a 2.0L powerplant to get a 162kW/350Nm belter, with pull from 3000 rpm like a shuttle launch. There’s a six speed double clutch automatic transmission attached and is programmed for Eco, Normal, Sport and Individual settings, accessible via a 
button in the centre console and shown on the touch screen in the dash. It’s an immensely usable combination, moves quickly and quietly through the gears in normal mode however the DSG’s mechanism does make shifting into Drive from Reverse a “wait for it” proposition. In Sports mode it opens the aural taps, allowing a growl from the engine to complement a more immediate response. However, even on a straight and long back road to allow a good clip, it required a manual shift from fourth into fifth and sixth only to have the computer to bring it back to fourth. Economy suffers, as a result. Skoda claims 6.6L per 100 km and that’s not unachievable if driven in Eco mode.
Uncertain Futures: What’s happened to the WTCC?
As the 2014 motorsport year draws to a close, it may be fair to say that it has been a year of the three R’s: revolution, resurgence and resurrection. Formula One introduced its brand new regulations, the BTCC has returned to a state of high popularity unseen in recent years, and the Blancpain series has thrown GT racing back into the hearts of the fans. In no way is this list exhaustive but most importantly it has been a year of extensive media coverage. As a motorsport journalist, I am able to talk to a wide range of industry experts about all things racing and throughout my interactions, there has been one common denominator, one elephant on the race track; what on earth has happened to the World Touring Car Championship?
“…the what? Oh the WTCC! I had almost forgotten about that”
Misogyny, Motors and Mechanics
Dear, oh, dear… do I detect a slight note of misogyny in my fellow blogger’s post “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (a title that, incidentally, Ray Bradbury nicked from Shakespeare’s Macbeth)? The first example is a female P-plater, there’s references to a granny driver and there’s a photo of a woman who doesn’t look that old in this complaint about bad driving.
I have absolutely no complaints about the actual examples of bad driving. And it may be pure coincidence that the bad driver first mentioned happened to be female. However, there is a long tradition in motoring of misogyny and general sneering at woman drivers. Whether it’s the advertising tradition of putting bikini babes on the bonnets of cars for sale, car racing games that assume that the player is a bloke or comments like “driving like a grandmother” or calling a particularly sizzling sports car a “chick magnet”, it’s been going on for a long time and does make things a tad more difficult if you’re female and a driver. Even those “pink parks for women only” that have appeared in some parts of the world are patronizing and annoying.
My Swedish Love Affairs
Go somewhere else if you are expecting to find a sizzling read about my steamy encounters with tall, blue-eyed blonds with angular faces and high cheekbones. For one thing, although I have had a couple of male friends from Scandinavian countries, including Sweden, I never even flirted with them. What’s more, the blue-eyed blond I married is from Down Under, and I’m not going to spill the beans about that. This is supposed to be an automotive blog, so for anything steamy and Swedish, you’ll have to wait until I put out a Mills & Boon romance with a hero named Eric. Instead, this is about two of the nicest cars I have driven, both of them Swedish.
First of all, there was the Saab 9000, a.k.a. The Valkyrie. This was a deep pewter grey sedan that some of my friend dubbed “The Euro Beast”. This was my first encounter with Swedish cars – I had already encountered my share of French (Simca), German (VW), British (Morris, Austin) and Italian (Alfa Romeo) vehicles and was prepared for this new European model to be similar. It wasn’t. It was better. It had such an excellent blend of practicality and luxury that I forgave it all of its quirks, like the way that the interior cloth lining fell off the roof because it had been designed for the colder Swedish climate rather than the warmer one down here. I forgave it the way that it had to sit in the garage for yonks every time it needed a spare part that had to be imported and took three weeks to arrive on the boat from Europe. I loved that massive boot, the heated leather seats and its super-responsive acceleration. It was roomy, it was beautiful, it was fun to drive, and I was really sorry when the day came to trade it in for an Isuzu Bighorn so my husband, the blue-eyed blond mentioned above, could do a bit more with his contracting business and take the family on 4×4 outings.
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