Skoda Enyaq Coupe iV
(Picture: Handout)When I wrote about the Skoda Enyaq iV recently, I said it was one of the best fully electric family SUVs you could buy. But what if a bit more style is more important to you than sheer practicality?
Step forward the four-door Skoda Enyaq Coupe iV. This is a good-looking car with a swooping coupe roofline and in some cases an illuminated Crystal Face dummy grille. Rear passengers usually lose a little headroom with coupe versions, but Skoda has used clever design to keep headroom the same as in the SUV.
The SUV comes with a choice of 57kwh battery, badged the Enyaq 60 or 82kwh unit badged 80. But the Coupe 60 isn’t coming to the UK, so the 204PS 80 it is. For people wanting even more poke there is an all-wheel-drive 299PS vRS version too, the first fully electric vRS the company has made.
On the road at the car’s international launch in Italy, the vRS didn’t cope too well with bumpy country roads except at low speeds. It didn’t feel as well nailed down as you would expect from a vRS model, although the cabin quality and low speed ride on smoother roads was excellent. Even the vRS never feels truly sporty and doesn’t seem to like being hustled along at speed, despite having very pokey acceleration (0-62mph in 6.5 seconds).
The vRS has a thicker sports steering wheel than the Coupe and as well as more pep, and its beefed-up suspension gives it better turn-in while cornering. Our test car cabin came with an elegant Alcantara-covered stitched dashboard, which, as in the SUV, is a fine example of clean, modern design.
The premium-feel cabin with vegan leather seats felt airy and roomy despite being finished in dark colours. This is largely due to the full-length glass sunroof which is standard on all Coupe and vRS models.
Based on the Volkswagen group’s MEB platform, the cars are built at Skoda’s main plant at Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic, making them the only MEB-based cars built outside Germany.
The vRS version has the Crystal Face grille as standard. This consists of 131 LEDs illuminating the vertical ribs of the grille and the horizontal light strip. The extra power gives it a top speed of 111mph, which is 12mph more than any other Enyaq.
The Enyaq Coupe we tried had a less premium feel to the cabin, and was finished in the sort of brown trim which, until recently, we haven’t seen since the Seventies. But it is a still an adequately fast car and the saving of £1,800 over the vRS will make sense to many buyers.
Skoda is claiming a maximum range of 335 miles for the Coupe iV 80, which is two more than the SUV. I questioned the range of the same drivetrain in January, when my test car seemed to have a real-world range of about 220 miles. But I have since spoken to people using long-term test cars, who say that milage in the high 200s is perfectly achievable. In fairness, January’s cold weather would have troubled the range of any EV.
This new version of the Enyaq is a good-looking and welcome addition to the range. Just don’t expect the vRS model, which arrives here first, to be as sporty as some other Skodas bearing that badge.
The Facts
Skoda Enyaq Coupe iV 80
Price: TBC but approx £50,000
0-62mph: 8.8 secs
Range: 335 miles
Top speed: 99mph
The Facts
Skoda Enyaq Coupe vRS iV
Price: £51,885
0-62mph: 6.5 secs
Range: 300 miles
Top speed: 111mph
