Skoda Karoq Scout 2019 UK first drive

Adults will find decent accommodation in the second row, with plenty of footspace under the front seats, reasonable leg room and good under-thigh seat support. There are air vents and a 12V power supply for those in the back seats, too, as well as usable picnic tables that fold out from the front seatbacks and are solid enough to support a laptop or tablet computer without depositing the same abruptly onto your groin when the car hits a bump. As far as second-row folding tray tables can be, they’re good ones.

In the boot, the Karoq Scout forgoes the option of a variable-height boot floor. It has got useful storage cubbies on both sides of the loading area, however, and very handy load-securing hooks on both sides also which slide fore and aft and can be used to keep shopping bags upright or to stop them from moving around. Take the back seats out entirely and you can accommodate up to 1810 litres of cargo in this car – more than you get in some SUVs that are considerably larger and more expensive – so it’d certainly make your monthly recycling centre visits more productive.

Just like the Karoq’s otherwise slightly dowdy and derivative exterior, the Karoq Scout’s cabin ambience is certainly the better for the addition of some extra decoration. Scout trim brings with it two-tone upholstery for the car’s comfortable and fairly widely adjustable front seats, and some slightly unconvincing though not unpleasant wood veneer for the door cards. You can pay extra for fully digital instruments and a 9.2in ‘Columbus’ touchscreen infotainment system if you want to, but our test car had neither and didn’t seem much the poorer for the omissions. The standard 8.0in infotainment set-up looks great and is easy to navigate, particularly so since it retains physical knobs for volume and navigation map scale, while the car’s analogue instruments are well-presented and readable. Perceived quality is mostly good, although there are some harder mouldings on the car’s lower transmission tunnel and door consoles that aren’t as pleasant on the eye or to touch as they might be.

Given that no mechanical modifications were made to the Karoq Scout’s suspension or running gear, it was always unlikely to rival a true off-roader in the mud-plugging stakes. That’s not to say it couldn’t tow a medium-sized caravan across a wet field, though, or make short work of a muddy rutted track or a snowy lane. These sorts of challenges represent the very toughest that life is likely to throw at a crossover SUV, after all – and the Karoq should handle them easily. With just under 180mm of ground clearance, it’s not a car to take over seriously challenging terrain; and, while it has suspension with enough travel to glide over an urban speed bump without obliging you to slow down much, it feels as if it’d run out of wheel travel pretty quickly over serious ruts and craters.

On the road, though, no mechanical modifications means that there are no ready-made excuses for this Karoq to be any less wieldy-handling, refined or easy to drive than any other crossover of its kind; and, by and large, it needs very few.

Without ever promising much in the way of driver satisfaction or threatening to set new dynamic standards for the crossover class, the Karoq Scout conducts itself just fine in everyday use. For outright grip level, handling accuracy and ‘goes where you point it’ directional obedience, the car is about average for the class – and so it feels pretty much as wieldy and agile as an average small family car.

A Seat Ateca, Volkswagen T-Roc or Toyota C-HR would feel keener and more poised through a corner, since the Karoq’s suspension makes for a slightly soft and overly permissive sense of body control that can become a touch problematic when the road surface becomes choppy. The Skoda also adopts a less settled motorway ride than some of its rivals, although ride comfort is fine on smoother roads and cabin isolation from both road and wind noise are both decent.

The car’s four-cylinder diesel engine can get disproportionately noisy at high revs and suffers with a shortage of throttle response below 1800rpm, but keep the rev-counter between 2000rpm and 4000rpm and performance is flexible and fairly stout. Once you’ve learned not to let engine revs drop too far, you could tow easily enough – although a slightly notchy gearshift wouldn’t sweeten the process much. Real-world motorway economy should vary from 40mpg to 50mpg depending on your cruising speed – which, again, is about average for a diesel crossover.