Quote Originally Posted by BluChris View Post
Either either. Just imagine if the Octavia had been $19,990 drive away and the Fabia $14,990 with aggressive marketing and capped price servicing. It could have been a very different picture by now.

As I understand it, when Skoda took off again in the UK it was this kind of relative value that did it. De-specced cars maybe (no alloys etc) but they were very good value against the competition. Not capped price servicing either but by all accounts cheap servicing.
It might also have been a very different picture if at the time of the Skoda launch here in late 2007 BNP Parabas hadn't gone toes up triggering events leading to Lehman Brothers collapsing less than 12 months later. Here in Oz we've insulated ourselves from the bigger picture of what Australians alone call the Global Financial Crisis. To the rest of the world it's known as The Great Recession. It's the sort of difference between getting shot at, and getting shot.

Under Wiesner the Yeti was released. The base model was discounted by about $2500 just before it's release to make it lower than it's nearest competition (Captive, CR-V, etc). Yeti is now Skoda's top selling model in Oz. I don't think that's coincidence, or good luck. The strategy worked.

The elephant in the room is always going to be VAG. They want Skoda to be profitable, but just how much do they want to see Skoda succeed here in direct competition against their own badged models?