Skoda Octavia vRS diesel – now with four-wheel drive

Skoda has added a four-wheel drive option to the Octavia vRS diesel – with DSG gearbox – and added Sat Nav as standard to the Octavia vRS range. Costs from £27,315.

Now may not be the most propitious time to be launching a new diesel-engined car from the VW Group, especially in light of the the VW Defeat Device scandal, but a new diesel-engined Skoda Octavia vRS with four-wheel drive is what we’re getting.

Skoda has decided to give the Octavia vRS range a bit of a lift – they’ve added Sat Nav as standard across the range and upped the starting price to £24,474, an increase of £400 – as well as giving buyers of the performance diesel vRS the option of a Haldex 4WD system.

The 4WD option, complete with DSG gearbox, gets the same 181bhp 2.0 litre TDI (not the EA 189 version at the centre of the emissions scamming) as the regular vRS TDI and can scoot to 62mph in 7.6 seconds, although the 4WD option will reduce economy by around 10 per cent.

The Skoda Octavia vRS range now starts from £24,230 for the 2.0 litre TSI with 217bhp, rising to £28,940 for the vRS 230 Estate, with the new vRS diesel with 4WD costing £27,315 for the Hatch and £28,515 for the Estate.