I completely agree with you bluesup & benmac, the colours available in Australia are not only dead boring but seriously questionable from the road safety perspective, in Australia. If I had the power to do so, I would ban the b!oody lot of them. What moron decided the best colour for a car is a narrow range near the same colour as the asphalt & the storm clouds in the background?
Of course the marketing gurus will try & tell you these are the colours Australian buyers want, based on the rear view mirror of past purchasing. What utter rubbish. People buy them after picking what they think is the best of a bad lot pr, because that is all there is available. Look at our roads; every car is grey, white or black.
Some years ago, this was a hot issue discussed in national road safety forums & governments demanded car manufacturers offer more visible colours. That lasted about five minutes, before we all had to select from the funeral directors chart again. I'm about to take possession of a Quartz Grey Metallic car, with wheels about the same colour. It is nearly the same colour as a Gunmetal Grey XR8 Ford I had for a while. It got hit three times when parked in the streets in fading light. It is also a terrible colour for showing up road dirt. I'm taking it because, that's all there is on offer.
Thank god cars have day driving lights & side parking like options these days. In that regard, they're almost as advanced as the Peugeot 403 my old man had in the late 1950s!
FWIW, the most visible car I ever owned was a 1972 GT Falcon in 'Yellow Fire'. The best description of it is, the colour of a flashing blinker. If Skoda offered 'yellow fire', I might even be prepared to wait 6 months to get it. Colour makes a big difference to visibility, when driving through the dappled shade of country roads.
Sorry for jumping on the soapbox everyone, but this has long been an issue for me.
Wow just had a look at the sedan (I'm a fairly blinkered wagon/hatch type of bloke). Looks great!
I'd still go for a wagon as it suits my family, but it's certainly not a clear cut choice if you're on the fence.
You prompted me to have a look at the configurator in Europe, bluesup.
Our Tech Pack & comfort pack much cleaner options compared to the way many items are individually offered as options in Czech Republic & Europe. Did you notice the standard alloy on a 206 there is an 8x18 Supernova in Anthracite? The high cost option is the 19" wheel standard out here.
When you select a motor on the Euro configurator, the engine's CO2 emissions level is displayed at the bottom. Out here you won't find a single reference to emission levels in any of Skoda Australia's advertising or specs. For reference, the 206 is quoted at 190g/km. The smaller Tsi engine at 110g/km. Both better figures than the 3T 118s 200g & 191s 243g figures. The B8 configurator version out here has 'lost' the CO2 figures. I suspect because, whilst VW may argue no problems under Australian rules with the ea189 engines, they had quoted EU5 & emission figures not met, in their brochures. It is interesting none of the motoring journos seem to have asked the question, because when the 3T came out, the CO2 levels were considered a big plus.
An interesting insight into what VW/Skoda make of us, with the different customer engineering on opposite sides of the world.
It was hard to miss the differences. From the Sportline that is available (blacked out bits and interior, new seats, Vega rims, plus some extra gubbins on the infotainment) through to the C02 emissions that we don’t get to see and the colours that we miss out on, including the brown (!) interior. Our choices seem to be stacked in a mostly logical grouping. Safety looks foremost as we get all the airbags as standard but a market like the UK has to pay extra for rear-side airbags, even on the top spec L&K variant. Same for the rear-view camera.
The Aussie importers seem to be taking a leaf out of the Apple playbook; Good, Better, Best, and limit the options. 162, 140, 206. Three options, tech, comfort, and roof.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Will they add more options? Break up the packs? Limit things further? I don’t feel slighted by their choices, except for the lack of colours and that’s where I am with you 2009fsi. When you look at Merc and BMW, it appears Skoda Aust are trying to ape their choices. Merc offers a red but I expect we won’t see that for the Superb until the Sportline is sold here.
I'm a bit of a VW group nuffy - have been loving nearly all of their new models of late. Basically, I've been wanting to upgrade my Tiguan to a wagon for about 6 months now and have narrowed it down to the new Passat or new Superb. I'm massively disappointed VW didn't release the 206tsi Passat in Aus as I would have jumped at that straight away. I test drove the 132tsi and found it a little underpowered even compared to my 132tsi Tiguan. I've test driven the new 206tsi Superb and love how it drives, but there is one thing I don't like - the light coloured headlining. I got the feeling sitting in the R-Line Passat that it felt so much more expensive and luxurious compared to the Superb, simply due to the black headlining, and from what I can gather, it isn't an option that can be changed on the Superb.
Here comes my question; I've searched high and low for headlining replacements on google without luck - if I do go for the 206tsi Superb, does anyone have any suggestions as to where I could go (I'm located in Melbourne) to get the headlining etc. changed to black as soon as it's delivered?
AwesomePossum, the 206 Passat is already on the cards for MY17 so if you can wait, then do so. The black headlining is part of the Sportline package on the Superb and it will be coming soon as well. The Sportline name was in the registration for MY16 Superb.
AwesomePossum - If you look at the Guvmint database for Road Vehicles you can see the MY16 Passat here without the 206TSI Road Vehicle Descriptor (RVD1)
You've made my day! Where do you get your info? The hours I've wasted searching the web for this... I even ended up on page 3 of a Google search! Who the f*** goes there these days!? haha
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