We’ve yet to try the hatchback variant, but the latest Octavia vRS seems set to remain a left-field choice in the hot hatch market. It’s nicely finished, very practical and, while it’s not cheap, it is solid value. It’s not as involving or as fun as Ford’s Focus ST Estate, but it’s hard to not appreciate the refinement and sophistication on offer here. So perhaps we should put this down as a car that’s easy to admire and respect, but a slightly tougher one to love.
Manufacturers face a tricky balancing act when it comes to their performance badges, but you can’t accuse Skoda of not being committed to vRS.
The latest Octavia vRS is available with three powerplants – a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol, a 1.4-litre petrol-based plug-in hybrid and, at some point in the first half of 2021, a turbodiesel edition that can be had with four-wheel drive. All of these iterations are available as hatchbacks or estates, too, giving the vRS nameplate great breadth.
We’re starting here with the petrol edition, in estate form and equipped with a seven-speed DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission (a six-speed manual is in the pipeline too). The engine produces 242bhp and 370Nm of torque from 1,600rpm – enough to take the car from 0-62mph in less than seven seconds.
Those figures are punchy enough to match those of the Mk8 Golf GTI. And yet in hatchback trim, the Octavia vRS costs from £31,495 – a couple of thousand pounds less than its German sister model.
In the past, that type of advantage would have been reflected by a slightly cheaper-feeling cabin. But that’s no longer the case. Indeed, there aren’t even any garish flashes of Skoda ‘vRS green’ to be seen, just a bit of red stitching on the dashboard trim, some sports seats, and a slightly racier steering wheel. The vRS’s interior is sophisticated, smart and nicely finished, backing up everything we’ve experienced so far in this latest generation of Octavia.
The vRS’s on-road behaviour further reinforces this extra maturity – although depending on your expectations, you may conclude that this is not an entirely positive development. Because if you want your Octavia estate to feel like a full-blown B-road weapon, you’re going to end up being a little disappointed.
The signs are there from the moment you fire up the engine, because in contrast with some hot hatches, there’s barely any theatre at all; it could easily be a regular 1.5-litre Octavia instead of the performance flagship.
This relative absence of drama continues once you’re up and running. Rev the engine hard and it has that usual, slightly droning VW Group tone, but it’s near silent at a motorway cruise – drowned out easily by rumble from the low-profile tyres beneath.
Find some faster, twistier roads and the vRS’s rationale becomes even more evident. There’s decent low-down punch from the engine and, although the auto gearbox is a bit too keen to shift up early in day-to-day running, you can flick it into a sport mode to sharpen its focus, or use the steering wheel-mounted paddles to activate the ultra-sharp shifts yourself. It doesn’t quite feel as rapid as its raw performance figures suggest, though. Swift? Yes. Comfortable with the car’s size and weight? Absolutely, yes. But scorching fast, as is the norm for this class of car in 2020? We’re less sure.
The steering is pleasingly direct, although it’s a tad lighter than we’d like and still relatively uncommunicative. The standard limited-slip differential helps to keep the nose in check in corners, and you can certainly throw this Octavia around more than any other in the range.
But while the body control is decent and it’s happiest on fast, flowing roads; anything particularly bumpy or rapid changes of direction unsettle it. But the vRS rides better than some conventional Octavias, even on the standard 19-inch wheels, because it gets a sophisticated multi-link suspension. However, a Focus ST Estate brings more satisfying steering, B-road agility and involvement.
The vRS doesn’t want for kit, though. LED matrix headlights are standard, as are heated front seats, front and rear parking sensors, the digital instrument panel and a brilliant 10-inch infotainment system.
And of course, behind the front seats is one of the best rear passenger areas of any mainstream production car, along with an enormous load bay (600 litres, or 1,700 litres with the back seats folded down). The Octavia may not have the Focus ST beaten on driver thrills, but it hammers it (and anything else at this price, for that matter) on practicality.
Disregarding the fuel cells beneath its bonnet, the Mirai is up there with ‘normal’ luxury saloons for the suave way it goes down the road. More than that, it’s a fantastic showcase for Toyota’s increasingly efficient and affordable hydrogen tech. Sadly it’s still teeth-suckingly expensive next to ICE alternatives, and is likely to remain a niche corporate purchase for a while yet. But with hydrogen cars this good on the market, the infrastructure surely can’t be far behind.
The development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HEVs) has been stuck in a chicken and egg debacle for many years now. Which comes first – the cars or the infrastructure?
Given that there are currently 14 hydrogen filling stations in the UK, despite the fact that there have been two hydrogen fuel cell vehicles available (albeit at prohibitive cost) on sale over here in the shape of the Hyundai Nexo and Toyota Mirai, it looks like the car is going to have to come first.
So here is Toyota’s latest effort to further the hydrogen cause; the all-new, second generation Mirai. This is an early pre-production model but, with the car now based loosely on a Lexus LS platform, the Mirai has become rather suave and dashing in an understated kind of way.
Unless you were looking for the tell-tale badges on the outside, you’d never know that a fuel-cell stack sits beneath its bonnet, which in turn drives a 180bhp electric motor mounted on the rear axle. In the middle of all that sits three T-shaped hydrogen tanks that can take 5.6kg of hydrogen – the equivalent of 142.2 litres, giving an estimated driving range of around 500 miles between fill-ups (which take no longer than in a petrol or diesel car).
In practice, the serene-feeling new Mirai is a revolution to drive compared to its predecessor. The steering is light and, while far from precise, feels direct and predictable. Ride comfort is truly exceptional, too. There’s quite a bit of pitch and heave as the sizeable body (which roughly splits the difference between a BMW 5 Series and 7 Series) shifts about, but it’s well controlled and unobtrusive, not to mention worth living with for the pillowy way the Mirai rolls over scruffy surfaces.
This comfort, and the near silent, seamless power delivery are the defining characteristics of the Mirai’s newfound luxury ambience. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is still driven by an electric motor so you get the same continuous, uninterrupted stream of acceleration that is becoming familiar with normal battery EVs. There’s no discernible noise at all from the fuel cells as they putter away mixing hydrogen from the fuel tanks and oxygen from the atmosphere, to create electricity for power, and a small amount of water as the only bi-product, which you can purge by pressing a tempting ‘h2o’ button just next to steering wheel.
This powertrain is quiet and refined by its very nature, then, and in the Mirai it’s cosseted in a car that’s been given all the refinement treatment you’d expect of a top-notch Lexus. But for a distant burr of wind and tyre rush, noise and vibration in the Mirai is virtually indiscernible.
Even the interior, which is stuffed with high quality leather, chunky armchair-like seats, a huge touchscreen resplendent with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as well as factory-fit nav, feels befitting of a limo-class car despite the odd cheaper-feeling switch and panel finish. There’s luxurious amounts of room to stretch out in the back seats, too.
The only thing about the Mirai that isn’t luxurious is the performance. It doesn’t feel as lazy as the 0-62mph time of 9.2 seconds suggests; there’s decent pick up even from middling speeds to motorway speeds, but for a big, plush car – environmentally minded or not – it’d be reasonable to expect better performance. Toyota maintains that it can put a more powerful motor in fairly easily, but with efficiency and range the chief priority with the Mirai, engineers stuck with stately rather than sporty performance.
As it is, it’s really rather lovely to drive in a big, wafty, almost eerily quiet fashion. But more importantly it represents a host of incremental gains that could help to make hydrogen a feasible solution for mainstream vehicles.
The fuel cells are now lighter and more efficient, and the fuel tanks aren’t just bigger, they’re made of a new, lighter and more affordable carbon fibre. More than that, with these gains factored in and Toyota’s increasingly refined hydrogen fuel cell production line, the company can now punch out a hydrogen fuel cell in a matter of seconds - and for usefully less money than before.
Having said that, the Mirai still may not even be available as a normal retail purchase. List prices are yet to be confirmed, and while it’s expected to be more affordable than before, you’ll probably still have to find around £65,000 – or a monthly lease payment (the previous generation cost £750 per month) is also a likely option.
That’s cheaper, yet a million miles from cheap. Even without the extreme limitations of the hydrogen charging infrastructure, being able to get an Audi A6, BMW 5 Series or otherwise for some £20,000 less makes the Mirai, well… Let’s just say it’s hard to recommend. Even so, that shouldn’t detract from the fact that it is, by any measure, lovely to drive and – most importantly – a superb showcase for hydrogen fuel cell technology.
