Superb Wheels COTY

[Sales @ Mentone Skoda]

You are all probably aware that the the Superb made it into the top 4 wheels car of the year competition for 2009. I was only made aware of it when a customer brought it up whilst in the showroom on Saturday..

I looked at the contenders and the competition was pretty high class, Golf, Merc E class were up there also with the golf winning as we all know. I would have thought the idea of the Superb, although not winning, a least making into the top 5 was a very positive thing and something worth promoting?? This year it was reported to be the largest field of new cars in the COTY competition which only strengthens the case for the Superb, it etched out more desirable sports cars and luxury saloons. I read that the Superb came 3rd over the Merc E class but i couldn't find any concrete evidence but i only googled for the result so it wasn't really a protracted indepth exercise.

Does anyone know the exact result and should this be something we should see as credible and worth promoting???? As it stands the skoda.com.au website doesn't refer to this and i'm not sure whether that means it isn't credible?

I must admit though the Superb is a much nicer car than the Passat and eats the Statesman alive which is surpising as in OZ VW are seen as the top ed of semi-prestige, that was even my perception before coming to Skoda

[K1W1]

The big problem for the Superb in Australia is that in it's market it's too narrow and only really a 4 seater. That's the reason it hasn't been adopted by the Taxi and hire car industry. They look, they love the shape, the leg room, the boot space the economical diesel engine and then they get in the back seat and go no thanks.
I think the wagon will sell better because it will go to a more upmarket family market rather than the executive "I want something big" market which is where it's competing at the moment.

[Jake02]

I read that the Superb came 3rd over the Merc E class but i couldn't find any concrete evidence but i only googled for the result so it wasn't really a protracted indepth exercise.

Does anyone know the exact result and should this be something we should see as credible and worth promoting???? As it stands the skoda.com.au website doesn't refer to this and i'm not sure whether that means it isn't credible?

Wheels never revealed the actual placings, but the Superb made it into the 3rd round if that's what you,re looking for. The thing that annoyed me abit was that they never really said why the Superb didn't win, because I was completely convinced that it was gonna win. They said that the styling is abit strange/ugly, the ABS/ESP wasn't a stunner and that the Twindoor wasn't as good as it set out to be. But that was it...

The Golf was criticised for being short of rear space and for being expensive (which it kinda is) abit of a mixed-emotion thing. Yep, it's a great car with few worries, but the Superb was the same in the number of criticisms. I suggest that the gap was very close between the two cars (especially at the beginning article, the fellow said that the judges joke-voted on the Prius but there were two cars capable of winning...I'm sure that meant Superb and Golf)!

Skoda won't advertise that because it means there's a better car out there than the Superb, different markets I know, but how does 'the new Skoda Superb. 2nd in Wheels COTY' sound? Not that positive...

[K1W1]

You can never go wrong picking a Golf in situations like that it's the safe bet. The possible problem with the Superb is the Skoda brand being new and relatively unknown in Australia and also I guess the issues that Wheels may have been having with their Octavia at the time.
Over the years Wheels have picked some real heaps of rubbish as their COTY (think JB Camira and Magna as just two) so they may be a little gun shy of new brands and models now. Give Skoda another 3-5 years in Australia and I think things will be entirely different.

[Spook]

While it may not be worth Skoda Austalia advertising that the Superb 'only' made it to the finals, I think it is definitely worth the salesperson on the floor mentioning it to any prospective customer. Just say it was a "finalist", which sounds pretty positive.

I recall last year I was having a look at the Volvo XC60 when it first came out, and there were photocopies of a bulletin released by Volvo to their dealers, highlighting that a UK magazine gave it a higher rating than the Audi Q5. The dealership left photocopies of both the bulletin and the XC60 review lying around for customers to read. I thought that was pretty proactive of the dealer to do so, and probably better that it was "objective" by a third party, and not coming directly from the salesperson's mouth. (I noted that the bulletin stated the XC60 beat the Q5 in a head to head comparison, but that was not true. Both cars were rated individually, and the XC60 rated marginally higher, but it was not a head-to-head comparison).