In the very turbulent European automotive world, the Skoda Octavia offers a discreet point of reference, but with unfailing stability. Available as a sedan and station wagon, it embodies, with its long hood, its enormous trunk and its well-defined shapes, the archetype of the serious, classic, even all-purpose vehicle, but capable of offering a completely rational and, probably also reassuring, in the car.
Heir to the original Octavia produced in communist Czechoslovakia from 1959 to 1971, this undeniable best-seller from Skoda (fifth brand on the old continent in 2023) has been manufactured since 1996 in more than seven million units under the aegis of the Volkswagen group. It has made the manufacturer from Mlada-Boleslav, in the Czech Republic, the darling of Central Europe and a sure bet in Western Europe.
This spring, Skoda is introducing the restyling of the Octavia, number one in sales in the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, but also very popular in Germany, which represents its first market. In France, just under 7,000 units were registered last year, according to the Automobile Platform (PFA).
Few fantasies
The exterior style, freely inspired by the canons of beauty defined by Volkswagen, is part of a strict Germanic continuity and remains deaf to what could seem like vain fantasies. The interior, neat but austere, does not deviate from the rigor which the brand is not one to abandon. The Octavia offers engines (petrol but also diesel) which range between 115 and 265 hp and carefully ticks the boxes of the regulatory paraphernalia of driving aids. An XXL-sized screen emerges in the middle of the dashboard of the best-equipped versions.
For almost thirty years, the Octavia concept has not deviated one iota. A large, simple car, no less expensive than the competition (prices range from 29,880 to 43,900 euros) but larger and better equipped, with the reassuring belonging to a German group as a backdrop. A discounted Golf (the two models are designed on the same platform) but with a much more favorable quality-habitability-price ratio. The Octavia won’t necessarily impress the neighbor, but it offers value for money.
This reasonable and homogeneous approach has made it possible to nourish a discreet success story that other automobile groups envy, without saying too much, from whom it has not escaped the fact that the margin of 8.1% displayed by Skoda is much higher than that of the Volkswagen brand (3.4%), as with most other manufacturers. The Octavia, distributed in some 200,000 units each year, allowed the emerging middle classes of Central Europe to discover the modern automobile and then to become more gentrified as their purchasing power increased.
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