Skoda Superb Estate (2019-2023) Review & Prices

Estates are primarily about boot space, and on that front, the Skoda Superb has its alternatives well and truly beaten – cars like the estate versions of the Volkswagen Passat, Mazda 6 and Vauxhall Insignia Grand Sport as well as newer, less direct rivals such as the Citroen C5 X.

So, while Skoda daring to name its car ‘Superb’ may seem a bit like Starbucks declaring it makes the best coffee (a bold claim, and up for serious debate), the big Skoda really lives up to the billing. 

In fact, to further cement just how roomy it is, it won the carwow Best Estate Car in our 2021 Car of the Year Awards.

The Superb Estate is strong on the quality front, too; inside it’s extremely close to a Passat when it comes to look and feel. Close enough, in fact, that most people wouldn’t really notice the difference. Being picky, the lower half of the Superb’s cabin does have more scratchy plastics, but everything inside is impressively well screwed together and there are enough gloss black and chrome accents to lift the mood. 

The Superb Estate gets at least an 8.0-inch infotainment system with DAB radio, Bluetooth and built-in sat-nav, although you can upgrade to a 9.2-inch version. Both look great with their glass front when switched off, but also display pin-sharp graphics once on and are nicely responsive to prods, pinch and zoom. All models also come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. 

Cars don’t come much bigger inside than this. There’s a huge amount of room around the front seats and the driver gets generous seat and wheel adjustment, whether it be of the standard manual kind or electrically operated higher up the range. In the back it’s the same story – tall adults will have an almost comical amount of knee room in the outside seats and their heads will be well south of the ceiling.

Furthermore, at 660 litres, the Skoda Superb Estate’s boot is the biggest amongst its alternatives. The closest challenger is the VW Passat Estate with 650 litres, but a Mazda 6 is further off the mark. It’s not just bigger – the Superb’s boot is cleverer too, with lots of handy hooks, nets and cubbies. 

Although there are more powerful petrol options, the entry-level 1.5 with 150hp never leaves you wanting when accelerating and is pretty smooth and quiet. If you do most of your driving in town on shorter journeys, it’s a great choice. Given the Superb is a popular company car, diesel is likely to remain a significant option. You’re best off with the 2.0 150hp, with its great get-up-and-go yet still-impressive fuel economy making it the best all-rounder. That said, there’s also a company-car-friendly plug-in hybrid. 

The Superb Estate is a big car but it’s easy to drive in town. It has light, precise steering and good visibility for breezing tight town manoeuvres. The only black mark is that it struggles a little over sharp bumps compared to the Volkswagen Passat. 

Head to the motorway and the Superb comes into its own, though. Its soft, wafty gait makes it great for covering long distances and its cabin stays really quiet whichever engine you go for. It does a decent job of going around corners, too. OK, it’s no sports car, nor as outright agile as a Mazda 6, but you always have confidence when driving it hard.

You’ll notice, then, that there are few negatives when it comes to the Superb Estate. If you want lots of space, none do it better for such a keen price. However, see how keen you can get it over on our Skoda Superb Estate deal pages. To check out our used Skoda Superb Estate deals head over to our used page.

Being a Skoda, you’ll be expecting the Superb Estate to be pretty cheap. But it’s not… It is good value, clocking in at just under £30,000 for the most basic version, which is still pretty well-equipped to be fair, but it’s actually more expensive — if only slightly — than a Mazda 6 Tourer. The Mazda isn’t quite as big inside, but it’s prettier and sharper to drive.

Equally, the most basic Citroen C5X is actually slightly cheaper to buy, and while it — again — isn’t quite so massive as the Skoda inside, it is somewhat more stylish on the outside and has a cabin that looks and feels a bit more luxurious. It is, obviously, a bit more affordable than the similarly-sized VW Passat estate (well, there wouldn’t be much point in the Skoda existing otherwise) and significantly cheaper than the swoopier VW Arteon Shooting Brake, a car which if anything has more mechanically in common with the Superb than the Passat does.

The Superb is also a good foil to the likes of premium models such as the Audi A4 Avant, Volvo V60, BMW 3 Series Touring and even the mighty Audi A6, offering as it does a cabin that’s high in quality and comfort and — we can’t emphasise this enough — a boot that’s just truly enormous. Go for a pricey Laurin & Klement version (named after the founders of the Skoda brand) and you might just end up asking: “Audi who?”

The Superb Estate is a big smoothy, but it leans a lot in corners and its natural home is cruising quietly on the motorway. A standard reversing camera would really help in town

In town

The Superb Estate is really easy and pleasant to drive around town, and the suspension — for the most part — just easily soaks up the sorts of bumps, lumps, and speed humps that populate UK streets. While you don’t feel the bumps very much, you can hear them quite a bit as the suspension tends to react with a very audible ‘whump’ which you wouldn’t get in, say, the VW Passat. Visibility is good though, especially when you remember that the Superb Estate is a very big car. Skoda’s decision not to use pointlessly sporty rising window lines pays big dividends, and you very easily get a sense of where all the corners of the car are. You do get standard front and rear parking sensors too, which is a big help in something this long. The steering is nice and light, but the turning circle — 11.7-metres — is a bit canal-barge-spec. A reversing camera is available, but it’s only standard on the expensive Laurin & Klement model. 

It’s certainly not too big to drive in town, so don’t go thinking that but do watch for the DSG dual-clutch automatic gearbox being a bit sleepy when pulling away from a stop, and then suddenly jerking into life. That’s especially noticeable with the 150hp 2.0-litre diesel model.  

On the motorway

The motorway is the Superb’s natural environment. It’s just built for long journeys and putting lots and lots of miles in the rear view mirror in one go. If you’re doing that, you’re probably going to want one of the diesels, but don’t discount the 1.5-litre turbo petrol, which is surprisingly economical on longer runs, although it’s a bit short of grunt for long inclines. The plug-in hybrid iV model gets a bit too thirsty when you’re doing big miles. In the 2.0-litre 150hp diesel you should easily get better than 40mpg, and 50mpg is do-able. The DSG gearbox feels better up on the motorway too, responding quickly when you need to kick down and overtake something. Radar-guided cruise control is standard on everything but the base model, and it’ll keep you a safe distance from the car in front, and brake when they brake, which is handy on long runs. However, if you want the helpful lane-keeping steering, you’ll have to buy an upgrade pack, which seems a little stingy. 

On a twisty road

When the road gets challenging, you’ll find the trade-off for the Superb’s softly-softly approach to comfort. The Superb leans quite a bit through corners, and the light steering doesn’t offer you much in the way of fun. Sportline models only look more sporty, incidentally — they’re no more sporty to actually drive. Adaptive suspension is available as an option though, and that allows you to firm things up a bit in sport mode, but really the Skoda is a car that prioritises comfort and practicality. Having a sport mode or adjustable suspension is really a bit pointless. If you want an estate car that’s fun to drive, go for a Mazda 6 Tourer.

This is basically the most practical car you can buy. That’s it. That’s the headline. Biggest complaint is that you have to lean in to drop the rear seats

Practicality

Lift up the front armrest of the Superb Estate and you’ll find a massive storage bin which is also cooled by the air conditioning system, so it’ll keep your cans of Coke (other fizzy drinks are available…) nice and cold. There’s a USB port in there too. In front of that, there’s a three-part cupholder, the central part of which is sized for narrow cans or bottles, and the bottom of the cupholder has little rubber studs. These grip your bottle of water and hold it so that you can twist the top off without using both hands. Clever, and safe too. There’s a lidded storage bin in front of the gear shifter, which will even swallow the latest big-screen phones. There’s another USB socket in there too, as well as a 12-volt socket. The glovebox is a good size, and it’s also cooled by the aircon. There’s a big storage area under the front passenger seat, and the door bins — almost as big as the boots in some cars… — are lined with felt so that things don’t rattle and slide around. You also get a sunglasses holder in the roof, and a little pop-out drawer by the driver’s right knee which is ideal for loose change and keys. There are even little soft storage pockets built into the sides of the front seats, ideal for stashing a mobile phone or media player. And, of course, there’s the famous Skoda umbrella, which is stored in a little compartment inside the door and which is a really high-quality item. 

Space in the back seats

Space in the back of the Skoda Superb Estate is almost comically good. It’s not officially a stretched limo, but it might as well be given how much legroom and headroom there is for even the tallest of back seat passengers. There’s even space to stretch out and stick your feet under the front seat, while some models actually get a nice little foot-rest built into the floor in the back. You can pretty easily fit a third passenger in the middle seat, and the only drawback is that the transmission tunnel is a bit on the big side, although the generous footwells mean that’s less of a problem than it otherwise would be. You get ISOFIX points in the back seats and they’re optional for the front passenger seat. There’s so much space that fitting even the biggest and bulkiest of child safety seats is an utter doddle. The rear door bins are huge, there’s a little pop-out storage tray in the middle with a 12-volt socket (which looks suspiciously as if it was designed as an ashtray), and the door bins in the back are huge. You get a nice big armrest in the middle, which comes with fold-away cupholders so you don’t end up putting your elbow in the cup-hole. The rear passenger windows go all the way down, and there’s a great view out, plus the rear doors get electronic child locks, controlled from the front seat, which is really handy if you have growing kids.  

Boot space

This is why we’re here — for one of the biggest and most useful car boots in all creation. Behold the 660-litre majesty of the Superb Estate’s boot, which is about as big an estate boot as you can buy, and certainly as big as you might need. What does 660 litres actually mean? It means you can fit ten — yes, ten — airline-style carry-on luggage cases in the boot, without folding down the back seats and without loading above the luggage cover. That is properly massive. You get the expected hooks (some of which fold away), tie-down points and 12-volt socket, plus some useful under-floor storage space. Fold down the back seats and you get a massive 1,950 litres of space, but there are some shortcomings. 

First off, an adjustable boot floor costs extra, and without that you end up with a bit of a load-lip at the back, and a step in the floor if you fold down the rear seats. There’s also no handle in the boot to fold the back seats, so you either have to lean in through the massive boot (which is only an option for the very tall) or go around to the back door to fold them yourself. The VW Passat estate gets those as standard, but Skoda asks you to pay extra for those handles.

Cabin still looks stylish, but the infotainment is falling behind

For what was once a budget model, the Superb Estate feels pretty premium inside. Most of the surfaces are either squidgy soft-touch plastic or nice leatherette, and even when you look further down into the cabin the cheaper plastics look and feel more robust than merely cheap. The trims on the centre console look a little smarter than they used to, and if you upgrade to the Sportline model, you get fabulously comfortable high-backed bucket seats with Alcantara (fake suede to you and me) trim and Bentley-style diamond-stitching. It all looks and feels pretty high-end. 

All models now come with digital instruments (what Skoda calls a ‘Virtual Cockpit’) as standard, and while they’re a little bit plain to look at, you can twiddle the layout around to suit what information you want to see. In the centre of the dash is a standard 8.0-inch touchscreen, which optionally expands to 9.2-inches on more expensive models. It’s a good screen, and it looks expensive, and better yet it still uses the older Skoda software (not the new stuff that’s in the Octavia and the Enyaq) so it’s easier to use and much more intuitive. Thankfully, the Superb also hasn’t fallen prey to the dreaded touch-sensitive climate controls, and instead you get nice big buttons and rotary controllers which make sense and are far easier to use on the move. The screen can be upgraded to built-in sat-nav, but to be honest it’s not really worth it, as all models get wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connections so you’ll probably just end up using the navigation app on your phone. The basic eight-inch screen is a little easier to use as it keeps a physical stereo volume knob, but the larger screen is still pretty simple, even if it’s not quite as good a system as you’ll find in the BMW 3 Series Touring. 

You’ll easily find your ideal driving position thanks to seats and steering wheel that have lots of adjustment, and on everything but the base SE version, you get electrically-adjustable seats too, which makes things even easier. 

Overall quality levels are excellent, although some of the fixtures and fittings aren’t quite as slick as you’ll find in an equivalent Volkswagen Passat, and the cabin’s style isn’t quite as easy on the eye as you’ll find in the Volvo V60.

Most Superbs will probably be bought by company buyers, which means many heading straight for the iV plug-in hybrid version. This uses a 1.4-litre turbo petrol engine and big battery and electric motor for a combined 218hp and a claimed 232mpg. You won’t manage that, of course, but as long as you charge it up loads and make full use of the circa-30-mile real-world electric range, you might get close, and the Superb iV should do around 40mpg on a long run. Plus, it will have an unbeatable Benefit In Kind tax rate thanks to the 26g/km CO2 figure, which should keep the company accountants happy. 

For seriously long-haul drivers, either the 150hp or 200hp diesels are the best choice (they’re basically the same engine with two different power outputs) and both should crack 50mpg if you drive them gently. They’re also the best engines for towing, and the Superb is a hugely popular tow-car, able to haul as much as 2,200kg of braked load, depending on the model. The 150hp diesel has CO2 emissions starting from 129g/km which means £190 for the first year’s road tax. The diesel engines are a bit noisy though, and they’re noticeably louder than the same engines in the VW Passat. Almost as if Skoda was told to make them deliberately noisier…

Don’t discount the 150hp 1.5-litre turbo petrol. It may seem like an engine that’s only suitable to low-mileage drivers but it’s a better all-rounder than you’d think. True, it doesn’t have the low-down lugging power of the diesels, but it’s smooth and pleasant to drive, and capable of 45mpg on a long run. It’s not even too bad in terms of CO2 — 141g/km, meaning a £230 road tax bill in year one.

The current Superb hasn’t been independently crash-tested by Euro NCAP since 2015, which means that there’s a ‘test invalid’ mark next to the result as the criteria by which the tests are judged has moved on since. For the record, the Superb achieved a five-star score, with an 86% rating for adult occupant protection, and 86% for child occupant protection.

The Superb’s standard safety equipment isn’t great. You do get radar-guided cruise control on everything but the basic SE model, but pretty much everything else aside from lots of airbags and automated emergency braking is on the options list. If you want lane-keeping aid, blind spot warning, traffic jam assist, a parking camera, or traffic sign recognition, then you’ll have to pay extra — between £500 and £1,000 depending on the pack you want.

Skoda has a truly impressive reputation for reliability and quality. In fact, in general, Skodas tend to do better in reliability surveys than their Volkswagen cousins. While that may be because buyers still have a slightly lower expectation of Skoda — given its 1990s bargain-basement roots — it still speaks highly of the quality that the brand’s Czech factories turn out. The current Superb has had a small number of recalls; one for loose covers in the engine compartment, one for a faulty emergency call service function, and one for a faulty fuse in the plug-in hybrid version.