Clever Scout is prepared

7th May 2011 - Newcastle Herald by Brent Davison

Looking outside the box can turn up some interesting results, says Brent Davison after spending quality time in Skoda's all-wheel-drive station wagon.

HAVE you noticed how, in the past couple of decades, some car makers have been multi-tasking their various models more and more?

Think back to when cars were built for specific needs and then note how many light trucks are now family cars, how many hatchbacks are "hot", how many utilities are effectively sporty two-door coupes and how many four-wheel-drives have morphed into sports utility vehicles.

In fact one of the few categories to go unchanged is that in which the humble station wagon abides. Even so, in that relatively sleepy backwater of the automotive industry there has been change and those clouds continue to roll in.

Most of the change has centred on throwing on, and in, some good mechanical and dress-up stuff, giving the things some real street cred and changing the vibe from "humble" to "dynamic".

Look no further than Holden's Commodore Sportwagon, Mercedes- Benz C-Class (especially the C63) or Volvo's V60 for some outstanding examples.

Which brings us to ŠKODA's Octavia Scout, a wagon that has gone the other way, eschewing the ho-hum in favour of another kind of dynamism -that of the all-wheel-drive crossover.

Not any more.

Tick the "Scout" box on ŠKODA's Octavia order form and you can now also tick another box marked "DSG" (depending on who you speak to at ŠKODA or Volkswagen it is an acronym for either "dynamic shift gearbox" or "dual-shaft gearbox" and probably both) and get your Scout with a clever self-shifter that gives the mid-sized wagon a whole new outlook on life.

It has been a little while since we last drove a Scout (or an Octavia for that matter), so it might be timely to get reacquainted with both the car and the company.

ŠKODA became a wholly owned Volkswagen division in 2000 after the German giant was chosen as a partner by the Czech Republic government in 1990.

Rather than become just another assembly plant for Golfs and Polos outside of Germany, ŠKODA and VW took a different and far more interesting route (and many would suggest a much better one) by putting ŠKODA-specific designs on existing VW platforms and using a limited range of the parent company's engines and transmissions.

So Octavia comes to market as a five-door hatchback- but one that looks like a sedan rather than the traditional box-backed hatchbackand an imposing midsized station wagon that is also available as the all-wheel-drive Scout.

While Octavia comes with a choice of petrol and diesel engines, Scout brings only the diesel, which actually makes quite good sense considering its off-road connotations, regardless of how many wheels are doing the driving. In terms of p ricing Scout adds another $4000 to the price of the comparable 103-kilowatt diesel, front-wheel-drive Octavia wagon with the money soaked up mostly by the all-wheel-drive system, heavyduty suspension, bigger wheels and tyres and a few dress-up items.

Adding the new six-speed DSG auto to the package takes the price upward by another $2300.

It also makes for a very impressive automotive all-rounder that can do double duty as the family runabout and the weekend getaway vehicle.

At almost 4.6 metres long and 1.8 metres wide it has enough interior space for five and its 580-litre cargo space with the back seat up guarantees plenty of luggage space.

Drop the back seat and that balloons to 1620 litres or, in real terms, a load tray close to 1.8 metres long and about a metre wide at the narrowest point.

The all-wheel-drive system uses the familiar Haldex coupling to transfer torque to the rear wheels when it is needed (meaning that, for a lot of the time, Scout is a regular front-wheel-driver) and delivers as much as is needed at the time it is needed rather than acting as an on-off switch for the prodigious torque.

It is smooth and, funnily enough, was most noticeable and appreciated for what it did not do. Full-bore starts from traffic lights on wet roads were fuss-free and absolutely devoid of wheelspin or axle tramp.

So nothing has changed. Scout is still an evergreen and the 103-kilowatt diesel engine is as strong as an ox.

Nothing has changed? Well, actually, yes: the six-speed DSG that has been ported across from Volkswagen, where it does service in a number of models.

Believe it or not, the DSG does a fair old job of changing Scout's overall character in two ways.

In the first instance it smooths out the torque delivery of the diesel (320 Newton-metres that hits at 1750rpm and drops off at 2500rpm) in a way that the manual transmission cannot and absolutely crushes any kind of driveline shift shock.

Second (and this is the bit we liked) it gives the diesel a degree of driving sportiness that is just impossible with the manual gearbox.

The DSG, you see, sets itself for the next shift with the taller or lower gear essentially preset and when the shift does come it is quick, smooth and soft.

The manual, on the other hand, has to be used in a more deliberate fashion because of the large torque load and the noticeable weighting on the clutch.

So upshifts can be done with reasonable speed but downshifts are slower and the clutch is released softly rather than banged out.

DSG has a secondary shift gate that allows for a sequential manual transmission but what we really would have liked, just for the fun times, were paddle shifters, those steering column-mounted up and down shifters that mean gears are changed without moving a hand from the steering wheel to flick a shift lever.

Yes, we know it's a regular sort of station wagon and yes, we know it isn't meant to be at all sporty, but believe it or not, the Scout can actually be quite an involving car and even more so with the DSG.

By the way, without even trying we were able to match ŠKODA's official ADR81/02 6.1 litres/1001un average fuel consumption figure, making the 1570 kilogram wagon one of the most fuel-efficient mid-size StIVs we have ever driven.

Bottom line? The Scout is a good, sensible all-rounder and the DSG is well worth the $2300 impost over the manual gearbox.

ŠKODA Octavia Scout

$41,790 (not including statutory and dealer charges or options)

Length 4584mm
Width 1784mm
Height 1533mm
Wheelbase 2577mm
Tracks (f/r) 1531mm/1500mm
Ground clearance 180mm
Weight 1570kg
Cargo space 580-1620 litres

Turbocharged and intercooled 2.0-litre, inline four-cylinder with single overhead camshaft and common-rail, high-pressure, direct-fuel-injection. 103 kilowatts at 4200rpm, 320Nm at 1750-2500rpm. Six-speed automatic.

Front, transverse engine, all-wheel-drive, drive- shaft-mounted Haldex clutch, electro-hydraulically assisted rack and pinion steering, four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock brakes, electronic brakeforce distribution, traction control, electronic stability control, 17x7-inch alloy wheels, 225/50R17 tyres.

Independent MacPherson struts with lower links, coil springs, telescopic dampers and anti-roll bar front, "multi-element" axle with longitudinal and transverse links, coil springs, telescopic dampers and anti-roll bar.

Type/Capacity: Diesel/60 litres
Economy: 6.1 litres/100km (ADR81/02 combined average)
Carbon-dioxide output: 160g/km