Went to a point to point race meet earlier. By their nature they are on a farmers field with car parking on an adjoining field with a bigger slope.

 

We left after 4 races and our Yeti with 4x4 and 17 inch all season tyres was already sliding (safely) through the mud. I would love to see footage when everybody leaves at the end - many on big wheels and summer tyres 😁 Or is it just me?

 

I was also one of the original 16" wheels club, going to Skoda UK (as advised on this very  forum) to get the change. I also don't understand why there should be a problem ordering the smaller wheel size - the system is set up to let you choose paint colour and a number of other (high priced) options so we aren't talking about re-inventing the wheel here. (Apologies for the terrible pun).

My own experience was the first car I had with larger wheels/low profile tyres was a Volvo V50 bought in April 2009. I had punctures in April 2009, April 2010, August 2012 and twice in September 2012 (it's very sad that I keep such thorough records) before selling the car in May 2013 when I took delivery of my Yeti. Since then in nearly 11 years I've had just one puncture, in January 2016. I've always lived in the same area and the only obvious variable is the wheel size/tyre profile but my experience of about one puncture a year with the Volvo and one a decade with the Yeti is consistent with the conspiracy theory that we are forced to low profile tyres to keep the tyre manufacturers in business (even before factoring in the extra cost of larger tyres compared to their smaller equivalents - last time I needed tyres it was around £40 a wheel difference).

(Just a thought but which genius thought that ruffty-tuffty off-roading 4x4s would work best out of the showroom on expensive summer low profile wheels? A triumph of marketing over common sense?)

Re the rufty tufty marketing point, the trouble is that you could equally argue that it was the makers who gave cars the 4x4 looks without the four wheel drivetrain. Yeti included.

 

I think the first Qashqai and Q3 were the ones that sold in big volumes as front wheel drive variants, to the extent that Audi didn't even bother with a quattro version of the regular Q2 some years later?

 

Subaru stayed true to 4wd - you could still get an underpowered 1.6 version in the standard XV range until a couple of years ago, and they are still very good offroad.

 

Just launched (have opened separate thread), a sort of son of Yeti, an electric urban crossover

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/522000-elroq-and-epiq-new-electric-models/

 

Details of Epiq

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/this-will-be-skoda-epiq-find-out-more/

 

 

10 hours ago, SurreyJohn said:

Just launched (have opened separate thread), a sort of son of Yeti, an electric urban crossover

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/522000-elroq-and-epiq-new-electric-models/

 

Details of Epiq

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/this-will-be-skoda-epiq-find-out-more/

 

 

Looks ok in a Volvo EX30 kind of way. Modern design language and all that.