croquemonsieur

Apologies. I was talking about moving the gear shifter back from D to S as I don't have the centre display facility. Likely to be a similar overall effect though I expect. Thinking about this now, moving the gear shifter back seems to me a less distracting selection/deselection proceedure, whilst driving, than fiddling around with the centre display settings.

Sport is particularly desirable with the 1.0 DSG due to the high gearing in combination with the small engine + it's tendency to want to stay in as high a gear as long as possible. Presumably less of an issue with the 50% larger 1.5, which anyway seems to be somewhat differently set up with the transmission and how they behave together, that's from what I've read in Briskoda here before. I never used sport mode on my previous 1.2 Yeti (not sure it had it, actually) as that car seemed lower geared with enough umph for overtaking, without having to think about gearing. Still, I only use Sport now & again with the 1.0 Karoq, just enough to make driving a little more involving, but without all that dancing around with the gear lever and clutch I was so glad to leave behind, once I graduated to automatics.

Some people are nervous or just don't want to try anything different, like a friend who had a fairly upmarket a Karoq. He wouldn't go anywhre near standard fitted cruise control and as for automatic cars, no chance. It takes me a while to familiarise with new features - I started off using ACC just on quiet motorways and slowly graduated to incorporating it in more competitive situationss like the M25. Then onto non motorways. No doubt I'd have taken a similar approach with Lane Keeping.

Yep, shame they didn't throw those in too. Following Rory's message & referring to driver assistance aids, whereas as the Karoq Adaptive Cruise Control attracts maybe 50/50 for or against comments on this forum (I'm definitely for), I don't recall any positive comments on the Lane Keeping feature as implemented in Skodas. I was keen to have this in my Karoq, but circumstances didn't allow, so maybe that was for the better.

PS it's fairly easy to fit a reversing camera to the SE, but costs a bit and I wouldn't be without that extra bit either.

I'd probably go for the SE as the rear seats are fixed which means it has a more solid and thus more sound isolating rear parcel shelf, meaning less road noise. However if the rear seats will be used alot, I suspect the lift out adjustable-back-and-for seats in the SEL are more comfortable, as the seat part is 25mm higher off the floor. The boot cover here is a roll top to allow for variability in seat position. I certainly thought the rear seats in my previous similarly equipped Yeti were better than my current Karoq SE seats, but I don't often have passengers in the rear and so glad of the extra noise isolation.. If you can find an older SE Tech, that version has some rather nice alternative features to the SEL - it had the same Sat Nav but also Adaptive Adaptive Cruise Control which I really like and a couple of other things & it didn't come withe KESSY which I'd rather avoid if at all possible. Also smaller road wheels with higher profile tyres meaning nicer ride and cheaper more readily available replacement tyres.

Regarding economy in the various modes, I regularly drive from East London to Bristol and back via the M25 & M4 in a fairly well laden 1.0 DSG SE Tech Karoq and typically get 50mpg in Summer. The car doesn't have the 3 option driving mode feature as being discussed here, but it can be easily changed from Normal to Sport mode by pulling the selector back and revert to Normal by pulling it back again. I suspect Normal is more or less equivalent to ECONOMY mode as the car does want to stay in as high a gear as possible most of ther time and I do find it better to be in Sport when going up hills and for overtaking. Anyhow the point of writing is to note that my best ever Bristol run for Economy achieved 53mpg actual (55+mpg showing in infotainment) on the return leg, 2-3 years ago. It was only halfway along the M4 that I realised the car had been in Sport position since the start of the motorway - the car was in top - 7th when I checked the speedo at 70mph. Just to note, I did get the car up to 90mph a couple or more times to get past clumps of traffic, as I generally do on this journey. There may be contributory factors - prevailing wind is Easterly and maybe it was a bit stronger than usual (return trip is usually a bit more economical than outward) + I do seem to recall there was a fair amount of M4 traffic that time, so a slight hypermiling effect maybe (Actually, economy on most return journeys starts to notch up a little more once I get onto the final busy M25 race track, I assume due to so many vehicles slip streaming me along) + the engine oil must be nicely warmed up by then. It does point to the fact that being in Sport mode doesn't impact on economy, to say the least. I keep meaning to try doing the whole trip in Sport - maybe this Summer.

Fabill, you'd have to revert to a manual Karoq if you want a newish 1.0. They stopped doing 1.0 DSGs in 2019, I just got mine in time that year and I couldn't go back to a manual. I'd go for a newer 1.0 DSG Karoq with even more bells & whistles than the SE Tech came with and was hoping they might bring out the mild Hybrid 1.0 DSG that was being talked at one time about. However that doesn't now seem likely, so I'm hanging on to my current car a good many years yet and that's no hardship. I must try a new 1.5 DSG sometime though, just to see how it compares.

Some years ago, as part of quite a few noise reducing measures on my 1.0 DSG Karoq SE tech, I attached a SS exhaust pipe short extension piece, bought from Amazon. The original car was pretty quiet, but I do like car journeys to be as serene as possible and one noise source among several I was aware of, was a modest low frequency drone from the engine / stroke exhaust system, around 1500-2000 rpm when going uphill with engine working harder - otherwise, save the 1st minute idling from cold, the engine is unaudible (the 1.0 is said to be the quietest Karoq). I saw that the exhaust pipe ended under the car rear and thought it might help to terminate further back + I did wonder if their was a risk of gases getting into the car through the rear hatch - no doubt a totally unfounded fear. Whether this exhaust extension made a difference I don't know, but another modification that I've noted before in Briskoda, amongst the several I did - damping down the solid rear parcel shelf (mine thankfully isn't the roll top variety) with fairly heavy materials, almost eliminates that slight drone + also noticeably reduces road noise from the tyres. Of course scientifically one should do modifications one at a time, to really determine the effectiveness of any single measure, but I couldn't be bothered taking the exhaust extension off now, to check if it actually makes a difference.

Auto Express No 1,823 Special Issue has some details of a forthcoming small Skoda electric SUV, suggesting it brings back the spirit of the Yeti - actually a little shorter yet with a bigger boot. It will cost around £22,000, presumably base model, and they say it will be available next year. I've got to say that I find the current Kamiq if OK, a bit ordinary and unadventurous to look at, so as far as I'm concerned, it's nice that the artists impression of the Epiq indicates an attractive, interesting & modern appearance, both inside and out (not too keen on the 'thin grill though but back looks good). Here's hoping this Epiq has a more compliant quieter ride than the Yeti. In the meantime in around 6 months, a smaller version of the Enyaq, the Elroq, will be introduced (EV equivalent of the Karoq maybe), but no pics in AE. It's a pity there's no talk of hybrid versions that could use the same electric transmission rather than old style mechanical DSG etc. - rather in the manner of the original BMW EV with range extender. Not having a drive, as is so for a considerable proportion of the population, I'd be more or less dependant on public charging points.

I wonder whether it would be worth considering these Koni special active shockers when my 4.5+yr Karock 1.0 dampers begin to wear. I'm hoping they might further smooth out the ride over broken road surfaces. However, they seem to work more on the rebound than the initial compression bump, according to a graph I saw on Amazon. Reviews though suggest they do seem to improve the ride on a range of cars. https://www.koniuk.co.uk/products/special-active https://balancemotorsport.co.uk/suspension/shock-absorbers-dampers/koni

Red is my 2nd favourite Karoq colour and your's looks really good with everything else black. I really wanted my MY2019 1.0SE Tech DSG to be in creamy white, but had no choice but to accept the metallic red car they offered (& pay quite a bit extra) as that was the only one still available, with no more 1.0 DSGs coming into the country. White has 2 practical advantages as well as looking good to my eyes - it's the most visible colour to other motorists, so just a little less suscepible to collisions and it reflects a bit more of the sun's heat away in summer. Grey is probably the worst colour for visibility, particularly if driven without lights, but some of the more subtle non metallic greys I reckon do look rather smart. White's downside is it probably needs washing more frequently & I do seem to be getting away with doing that just 2-3 times a year nowadays with my red car - I'm not proud. I could black out the grill surround and paint the wheels and mirrors black and people would then think I'm driving around in a Sportline too, except the 16" steel wheels with high profile tyres are a giveaway.

In a way and probably being a bit simplistic, that was what I undertstood to be the original idea of radial tyres, from Michelin X onwards. The tread very rigid across the width so as not to squirm on the road surface and where all the reinforcing wires are located, yet very forgiving up & down when hitting bumps, due to nice soft sidewalls that flex easily. I recall years ago while waiting around in tyre service stations, often examining tyres lying around and they all seemed to have surprisingly soft sidewalls. At more recent tyre changes and so looking at later tyres as I still do - something to do while waiting around - sidewalls seemed to be more rigid than I recall in the past. Of course these days all tyres are much lower profile but often with big wheels and the tread cross-sectional widths are pretty enormous by old standardss. This means wheels & tyres stick out more & so more likely to scrape against kerb edges etc. suffering sidewall damage. So they now generally make tyres XL rated with reinforced sidewalls, so that presumably makes the sidewalls stiffer and ride a bit harsher. Doesn't this remind you of old style cross ply tyres with reinforcement all the way round the tyre (but of course without the tread squirm that these old tyres suffered). Maybe the Goodyear Vector 4 seasons harks back to the original radial concept, in which case I should maybe have considered these more carefully, when i did my tyre change 9 months ago.

Routemaster1461. What you seem to have is ACC+, I thought it was actually called Predictive Cruise control, or something like that, can't remember, and there had been much criticsm in a thread some months ago (or was that years ago now) about the extra features, particularly about it slowing down too much in bends. People were glad that you could at least switch it back to an ordinary ACC system. However I can't now see anything other than ACC on the Karoq website, so maybe they now simply call the new system ACC, incorporating all the extra poorly implemented features that at least you can switch out. Haloween1, as I noted before, my ACC (MY2019) has only failed once a couple of years ago for a short while, in very heavy rain. The other failure to operate recently in freezing weather is the only time that this has happened to me in 4.5yrs, so not too worried my ACC is going wrong, anyway it does seem to fail safely.

Routemaster, I didn't know that you could turn off ACC and just run it as a normal cruise control, how did you manage to do that - not that I'd normally want to as I find ACC, although not perfect, is safer than just using on ordinary dumb CC and certainly makes for a more relaxing drive. Anyway, it sounds to me like you still have ACC running, as surely slowing down so you don't crash into traffic in front, is it's main feature.