Skoda's technical chief prefers to to concentrate on making profitable cars in volume segments

Skoda has ruled out ever making a standalone low-cost sports car, preferring instead to concentrate on making profitable cars in volume segments.

The firm showed its open-top Skoda Fabia vRS S2000 sports car concept at Worthersee in the summer, raising speculation that it could be about to extend its vRS brand into a pure sporting model.

See Worthersee pics of the Skoda Fabia vRS S2000

But Skoda technical chief Eckhard Scholz ruled out a sports car to Autocar, saying: “This is not the next step for us. We want to be going into volume segments.”

Scholz pointed out that Skoda’s ambitious plan to double its sales from 2011 to 1.5 million units in 2018 required purely “doing the big segments and concentrating on the right things”.

Skoda is poised to expand its vRS brand, however, with a vRS version of the MissionL concept shown at Frankfurt last week and a hot version of the more traditional hatchback version of that car, previewed at Geneva in March with VisionD.

There will be no vRS version of the Superb, Scholz said, as the badge must “fit the car”. He believes the Superb is not suited to a hot vRS version.

Mark Tisshaw

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