Skoda Superb Estate car review – ‘It looks like acartoon character with a friendly moustache’

This made me immediately like it, and I didn't stop

There's something about the exterior of the Skoda Superb estate, the curve of its nose and the shape of its grill, that makes it look like a cartoon character with a friendly moustache - maybe the Lorax. This made me immediately like it, and I didn't stop, all the way from the parking space I could never fit into to the motorway I was pleasantly tooled up for. Even though it makes the most sense on a long journey, the fact of its comfort made up for the fact that it's too big, really, for nipping about. The cabin is spacious and actively pleasing to sit in, more like a train. Passengers feel as though they're miles away.

Cars this size divide into "family-ish" and "executive-ey", and even though in real life almost all families are preferable to all executives, in car world the opposite is true. This feels like business; it is soundless, even at high speeds, and really smooth. All road surfaces are the same in this car: the A303 could be an autobahn built in 2013, for all the challenge it poses. It's not particularly exciting. You're neither high on the road, nor low to it. It corners like a 62-year-old man at a tea dance, unhurried and deliberate. I was in the two-litre turbo-diesel, and I mused for about a seventh of every day on how much turbo technology has improved since my early driving years, when to have a diesel meant that nobody would ever believe you were in a hurry. This moved readily through the gears, it had no trouble overtaking anything, and I do believe I even saw a "Huh, I didn't know Skodas were that powerful" look in the eyes of the people I left eating my dust, although I can't vouch for that.

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