Skoda Slavia - Breathing life into the sedan

We drove a pre-production camouflaged prototype of Skoda’s upcoming sedan that should go on sale early next year to take on the likes of the Honda City and the Hyundai Verna. While most opinions are embargoed till its world premiere in the middle of next month here is what we can say about the new Skoda Slavia.

The Slavia is an upcoming sedan from Skoda that will be based on the same new modular platform that underpins the Kushaq SUV, the MQB-A0-IN architecture and also have the same powertrains as its SUV sibling. The Skoda sedan is actually derived from the Volkswagen Virtus, the Brazilian-made car that uses the MQB-A0 platform.

However, the Indian version of the MQB-A0 platform has an extended wheelbase and thus the Slavia has not only a longer wheelbase than the Brazilian Volkswagen Virtus but is longer as well but is just as wide. In fact, the Slavia is bigger than the first generation Octavia that was such a big hit in India and set up Skoda Auto as a premium brand in the country. The name Slavia has even more historical roots as it was the name of the first bicycles sold by the founders of Skoda Laurin and Klement. It is their names that adorn the top-of-the-line variants on many of the cars in the Skoda Auto portfolio.