Skoda Concept at Geneva

Skoda Concept Vision D - Skoda's design future

Skoda threatened us with a concept at Geneva which would signpost their future design direction. They also told us we’d get to see a new logo that would be more contemporary. And they’ve delivered.

The Skoda Concept - referred to as Vision D (no, we don’t know either) – is a smoother design language than Skoda’s current cars, looking as if they’d taken a clay of the current Octavia, got it wet and smoothed it down.

The grill gets bigger and shiny, the air intakes at the bottom are enlarged and the headlights get narrower. It’s not exactly a revolutionary change.

Inside looks a bit more ‘concepty’ than  actually pointing anywhere. There’s more room – thanks to a longer wheelbase with wheels at the corners look – and a big, clear glass console with a kind of i-Drive controller.

All this is supposed to head our way this year, together with the new Skoda logo. We did have a new Skoda logo emailed to us last week, which looked a bit cartoon-like. The real logo is less so. It’s really just a bolder version of the current logo and features on the Skoda Concept, as it will on future production cars.

Skoda has been a big success in the last few years, thanks to some great product, good pricing and a clear design. You could tell a Skoda at fifty paces. That may once have been a bad thing in the old Skoda-Skip days, but in an age of ‘corporate’ design it was a good thing. This new design direction seems rather bland.

It’s as if the Skoda character has been dialled out.

By Cars UK