Skoda Scoop: the five-year plan

After the failure of its alliance with Suzuki, Volskwagen is now trying to focus and rely more on Skoda for the budget car plans. A dossier on 15 new products that’s under development at Mladas Boleslav has been assembled by CAR which is the most recent five-year plan for new product at Skoda.

There’s a new AOO/AO/A segment competence centre that is going to be developed in India by both the Czechs and the VW team. The fact that the Indian emerging market expertise is strong and that the costs are low have determined the them to choose India as the place for the new segment competence centre. This will be responsible for a new low-cost engine as well as the future low-cost vehicle architecture.

SKODA MIssIon L

Skoda has initiated an important globalization program that is run by Winfried Vahland and that will focus initially on India, Russia and China. The program includes the assembly of 5 distinct models and the sale of 200,000 units/year. It is expected that the Skoda sales will jump from 762,000 to 900,000 units this year. Moreover, by the end of 2018 Skoda global output is expected to include 1,5m vehicles.

SKODA MIssIon L

Therefore, each of the following 5 years will come up with something new. Thus, 2012 will bring the Rapid saloon, the Octavia saloon replacement, the Yeti facelift and the five-door Citigo, then 2013 will include the Rapid Spaceback, the Octavia Combi replacement and the Superb saloon/Combi facelift, 2014-Fabia hatchback/Combi replacement, Roomster replacement, Citigo MPV, 2015-Superb saloon/Combi replacement, Yeti replacement and 2016 will come up with a new crossover that will be larger than Yeti, a new MPV larger than Roomster and a Rapid/Citigo facelift.

SKODA SUV XL

Chief executive Winfried Vahland has stated that Skoda hasn’t been affected by the economic crisis. He has also said that they will continue to provide products for less money.

In what the platform used for the future Skodas regards, this one will be derived from the MQB platform except for Rapid, Citigo and next year’s Seat Toledo that will still come with the PQ platform. More precisely, Rapid will feature a combination of a PQ35 (Golf VI) rear end and a PQ26 (Polo) front end whereas Citigo will feature the steering, gearboxes and engine that the MQB family uses and bespoke underpinnings.

SKODA Octavia Combi

Great focus will be on the plant architecture. Defining the engineering content and determining the assembly sequence, the plant architecture will now come first. This kind of approach will lead to a 30% reduction of the build times and 20% reduction of unit costs.

With this plan, Skoda intends to expand its RS line, Scout (crossover) line, Greenline as well as its luxury line named Laurin & Klement. Two SUVs and two MPVs based on the MQB platform will be offered in the medium term.Yeti will be replaced and will sit on the MQB-A platform. There will also be a MQB-B crossover, roomier and bigger than the Tiguan followed by the new MPV. And who knows, if we are lucky enough we might even get to see the Skoda variants of the future T6 microbus and the VW Caddy.