City Report

I have recently moved to a new house which has added at least 30 minutes of drive time to my commute. That said, I have never really felt those extra kilometers in our long term Slavia 1.5 that I have been driving over the last three months. Let me tell you already, it genuinely feels more special to live with compared to other similarly priced sedans and I can say that with confidence because we have had both the Honda City and the Hyundai Verna as long term loans in the recent past.

The more I drive it, the more I appreciate what our Slavia 1.5 has to give and having spent majority of the last quarter in and around the city of Mumbai, here are all the bits that have caught my attention.

From the driver’s seat

So Vikrant and I have contrasting views on the driving position – he is not a fan of how high he has to sit to look over the dash at an angle that he usually prefers but as far as I am concerned, the Slavia’s seating position for driving is quite comfortable. The steering column is set just right and all the controls are exactly where you want them. It’s just that my struggles with the back support on the front seats continue even after all this time – while there is enough lumbar support, I can never feel the top half of the seatback. May be it’s the angle of the backrest that’s not suited to how I sit in a car.

The Slavia is surprisingly easy to look out of. The side windows are set low and the wing mirrors are not just placed perfectly so as to not hinder your view around the A pillar but they are also well designed and broad enough to get a good view of the cars or two wheelers behind you.

Cabin ambience is something new age Skodas do well and even though the old Rapid didn’t really wow us, the Slavia definitely does. There are layers to this cabin and more variety in the look and feel of the materials on the dashboard than what’s expected at this price point. I also like the shade of beige and black used on the dash giving it that nice and rich appearance to it. There are a couple of areas like the inner door handle grip and the seat adjuster which could have been better finished but I am just nitpicking at this point.

It’s an audiophile’s car

Our car is the top-end Style variant which gets most of the new age features at this price point, if not all. So there’s ventilated front seats, reach and height adjustment for the steering, height adjustment for both driver and front passenger seat, cruise control, automatic headlights, keyless entry and climate control. My absolute favorite feature though is the 380W audio system with four bass speakers and four tweeters. There’s also a subwoofer in the spare wheel well and best of all, an amplifier under the front passenger seat. Now I drive a lot of different cars every month and it’s honestly surprising to see how mediocre some of the supposedly premium sound systems perform in expensive cars. There are times when I look forward to jumping back into the Slavia and play my music just to experience the sound quality it offers. It sounds rich, there is good depth in the mids and in terms of clarity and vocals it is easily among the best stock audio systems in a sub-20 lakh rupee car.

Goes over badly made roads like a boss

The other area where the Slavia stands above everything else, quite literally, is the ride height and that’s down to its nearly 180mm ground clearance. Now I admit, I am not a fan of the stance that you get because of so much clearance but I also have to say that it’s a blessing in disguise especially now when half of Mumbai city is dug up for construction and the roads are generally in bad shape. Fortunately, I haven’t seen the Slavia bottom out so far even across the worst of our roads and I intend to keep it that way.

Fairly economical when driven sanely

The turbocharged 1.5-litre engine is quite flexible, with decent torque low in the rev range and loads of pulling power once you go above 3,000rpm. The buildup of speed is quite addictive at high revs but what has also equally impressed me so far is the fuel efficiency that I have been getting. The Slavia has been mostly city-bound in the last three months and I have been averaging between 11 to 14kmpl depending on the traffic and driving style. When driven sanely, you will see figures of around 13kmpl consistently and that’s mainly because of the cylinder deactivation technology which automatically shuts down two of the four cylinders when the system senses that the car is not under load.

Details

Make: Skoda

Model: Slavia Version: Style 1.5 MT

Kilometres on the odo: 9,330km

Price: Rs 19.78 lakh (on-road Mumbai, when tested)

Photography: Kaustubh Gandhi