Hi everyone, picked up our new Karoq yesterday. 1.5 tsi, SE Drive DSG. Have to say it’s a lovely car. These are my fist impressions and a few comparisons to our previous car, a Mercedes B200 DCT. First of the engine in the Skoda sounds like a sewing machine compared to the merc whose engine sounded like a bag of spanner’s and sounded very raucous when revved. The DSG gearbox seems to change gear much more precisely than Mercedes DCT box, always seemed to slur into gear although you couldn’t feel the change. I am a little dubious about the mapping on the sat nav, put in our address tot come home and it said our address was off road, interesting as Apple, Google, Waze, TomTom, Garmin and Mercedes sat nav had no trouble, although it did bring us to our road, also coming round the M25 it told us to keep right to exit onto the M11, had we done so it would have kept us on the M25, what it should have said was keep left onto to junction and then keep right to go onto the M11 northbound. I’ll have to see if there is an update. A little disappointed they have done away with the removable boot light/torch, I thought was a neat touch. The boot floor is a little cheap and there is no way to keep it up, on the merc there was a strap you could hook up and on our VW Polo there are clips to keep the floor up, with the Karoq you either take it out completely or struggle underneath it. I know they are not the only manufacturer to do it but why are the interior reading light buttons not illuminated, it seems odd that they expect you to put a light onto be able to find the switch for the lights. I would say the ride quality is better than the Merc, handling I haven’t tried yet. It drives very nicely and seems to have plenty of power, although as it’s not run in I’m being very gentle with it. Not convinced having the cruise control on the indicator stalk is better that the standard VW controls on the steering wheel, but definitely better than the Merc system of having another stalk just below the indicator stalk, the amount of times we have flashed the headlights instead of putting the cruise control on! Looking forward to seeing how it goes once its ,all settled in.

2 hours ago, 1stkaroc said:

The boot floor is a little cheap and there is no way to keep it up

 

My MY19 has an elasticated hook on the underside of the boot floor. 

 

Another cost cutting exercise (like the removable torch). 

 

tom

 

In the scheme of things is not a great issue as the amount of times I need to go under the boot floor is not very often, just feels a little cheap, I am sure my Octavias all had a way of holding the boot floor up and a handle to pull it up rather than a hole punched through to stick your finger in.

Your Skoda is effectively an Audi or Volkswagen. The main components are shared across all VAG vehicles. The only way to justify charging you many thousands of pounds less than the equivalent model with a posher badge is to leave a few piddly little bits off. 

 

Prop the boot floor up with a stick or something, and  when Covid allows book yourself a nice holiday somewhere overlooking the Mediterranean with the money you have saved  and as you sit there in the evening with a carafe of wine watching the sun go down  you can contemplate whether the trade off was worth it.......

 

.........

 

 

.

Edited 2 March, 20215 yr by Phil245

It’s an interesting philosophical debate, if you pay less for something but get proportionately less have you saved anything or simply bought something cheaper. Don’t get me wrong I think Skodas are great value for money and my Karoq seems like a really nice car but but leaving things like a strap off the boot floor doesn’t fit in with Skodas simply clever sales line. 
the fact I’m am comparing a Skoda with a Mercedes says a lot for how far Skoda have come.

11 hours ago, 1stkaroc said:

 The boot floor is a little cheap and there is no way to keep it up, on the merc there was a strap you could hook up and on our VW Polo there are clips to keep the floor up, with the Karoq you either take it out completely or struggle underneath it. I know they are not the only manufacturer to do it but why are the interior reading light buttons not illuminated, it seems odd that they expect you to put a light onto be able to find the switch for the lights.

 

I experienced both your problems with my Yeti and found a way around them both.

 

For the interior lights, do you not have the tiny led lights in the roof console that shine down onto the centre console area? I lift my hand up until its lit up by either one of these and the relevant (left or right) map reading light is directly above which I can feel or actually see via the reflection from my skin, the main interior light button is between the two, a little harder to feel/find but you are in the close vicinity.

 

For my boot variofloor which opens differently to the standard Yeti one as I modified one from an Octavia MK1, my shopping bag hooks are always open because once closed mine need a screwdriver to deploy them, under the boot floor I have a bungy cord which I stretch underneath tha raised boot floor between the two hooks to hold it open, - only just but hold it does!

Didn’t know about the red LEDs I’ll look for the and yes the problem will be solved. I will look at how to keep the boot floor up but for a 10p strap I think Skoda could have provided one. 

11 hours ago, 1stkaroc said:

A little disappointed they have done away with the removable boot light/torch, I thought was a neat touch.

The boot floor is a little cheap and there is no way to keep it up,

but why are the interior reading light buttons not illuminated, it seems odd that they expect you to put a light onto be able to find the switch for the lights.

Not convinced having the cruise control on the indicator stalk is better that the standard VW controls on the steering wheel

 

Hi. I'll try to address those points. I have a MY20 Edition so the MY21 SE Drive may be different but...

 

1. The boot light was a fad. The only time I needed a torch, it was about as useful as a 2watt bulb. It's OK when it's inside the car, but outside? Useless. Whenever you saw reviewers mentioning the torch, you never actually saw them use it. ( They probably didn;t use it ). Good in theory, rubbish in practice. The torch on your phone is much better.

 

2.  My car has a strap for securing the floor. i.e.  Your owners manual may mention this under the 'Changing a wheel' topic.

 

 

 

3. I agree with you in part. Yes because there's nothing worse than jumping in to an unfamiliar rental car at night and not knowing where the switches are. However when it's your own car, when you've found the reading lights for the first time, because they tend to stay in the same place for ever...   So I don't have a problem when it's my car.

 

4. I agree with you there. However only a few cars in the VWGroup have cruise switched on the steering wheel albeit the latest steering wheel controls on say Golf, do not get good press ( literally ). But even Golf etc controls weren't always on the steering wheel, they used to be exactly where they are on your Skoda. Audi has a third stalk too. If you'd opted for radar cruise, you'd have gone back to a seperate stalk. I find I can operate cruise without moving my hands from the the wheel, something I could never do when I had radar cruise and that third stalk.

I had the boot light torch for 7 years in last 2 Yetis and never took it out of it's clip

I never used our in previous Skodas but it was a neat feature to have, like a strap to hold the boot floor up or a towing Eye which I nhabe noticed they no longer include.

My early MY21 has the towing eye, but the plastic puller to remove the wheel bolt covers was missing! There's no strap to hold up the boot floor, and as the Sportline only has the rail and bag hooks on one side, there's no obvious place to secure it on the righthand side of the boot. But as there's little space around the spare wheel for anything but various tools and spare bulbs etc, I won't be lifting the boot floor that often anyway. 

 

Chris

As a minor aside, anyone know how easy it is to remove the polystyrene gubbins for the spare wheel?  Thinking I may be able to squeeze my Engel camping fridge and a full sized spare (prob deflated) in at basement level.
 

18 minutes ago, DSL said:

As a minor aside, anyone know how easy it is to remove the polystyrene gubbins for the spare wheel?  Thinking I may be able to squeeze my Engel camping fridge and a full sized spare (prob deflated) in at basement level.
 

Easy, just 2 torx screws in each  one,   visible bottom left and right of poly moulding

My apologies to Skoda, my car has got a towing eye, my boot layout is different with only only one piece of foam and t he towing eye is underneath the wheel wrench, painted black, same colour as the foam and until I took the wheel wrench out it could be seen.

@BryflyMany thanks, will see if my fiendish plan will work.    If de-escalation of lockdown goes pear shaped, it’s all my fault as I started thinking about a Road Trip. 

MY17 YETI SAT NAV IS RUBBISH, I USE MY GARMIN, WHICH IS GREAT. SORRY FOR SHOUTING !

We had a 17 plate Yeti and although you had to press another button to use postcodes at least you could, the latest version will not accept postcodes, only VAG could tell us why and their not saying anything. Very disappointed.

Just read in auto express that the latest Volvo XC60 is getting infotainment software and maps from Google, if only VAG would do the same it would make it a much better car, I can’t help feeling that software companies should do software and car companies should make cars, perhaps that’s where their going wrong.

28 minutes ago, 1stkaroc said:

Just read in auto express that the latest Volvo XC60 is getting infotainment software and maps from Google, if only VAG would do the same it would make it a much better car, I can’t help feeling that software companies should do software and car companies should make cars, perhaps that’s where their going wrong.

 

Be careful what you wish for. One attraction to the HR-V I purchased was its infotainment system was Android based. As it turned out it was the worst in-car system Ive ever used, had little or no functionality, the few apps available were all in-house and were of no use and best of all it would integrate with Apple phones but not Android.

 

It's always best to see how these systems work in real life than pay any attention to what sales and marketing have to say.

I am always amazed how large companies put systems out that don’t work, do they not test them, does an accountant say that’s it you’ve spent enough put it into production. Do they only test in the lab, not with real people, I just don’t understand, is their anyone on this forum who could explain it to me, please.

Just like when Garmin moved from Mapsource to Basecamp. Why?

 

tom

On 02/03/2021 at 21:24, 1stkaroc said:

Didn’t know about the red LEDs I’ll look for the and yes the problem will be solved. I will look at how to keep the boot floor up but for a 10p strap I think Skoda could have provided one. 

 The LEDs are white not red.

 

The removable torch is very poor.  I keep a couple of slim hand torches (LED) around the car, much better.  I also replaced the boot light, on the opposite side to the Skoda torch, with an LED bulb. That lights up the boot properly.

Off the top of your head, do you know what type of bulb fitment that is?  Hoping it’s w5w as I have a bowl full of those from my previous cars. 

Hi DSL.  Photos below. 

The black bodied one came out of the Karoq, it has VW Audi branding on it. The other is one of a pair I bought around three years back for my previous Octy Mk3 vRS.  By luck or design they're a standard fit, I took them out of the Octy when I PX'd it for the Karoq, on the off chance it fitted. and it does.

They have them on Superskoda for an arm and a leg, here -

http://www.kopacek.com/Skoda/OCTAVIA-III/Octavia-III-MEGA-POWER-LED-cargo-trunk-light-KI-R

 

BUT I've just seen a single one is listed on their Karoq section - the blue-grey in the photo is artistic shadow. They're the same item, singles or pairs. TBH I'd prefer another in the Karok rather than the rechargeable torch.

 

http://www.kopacek.com/Skoda/KAROQ/Karoq-MEGA-POWER-LED-cargo-trunk-light-KI-R

 

My photo shows how bright they look in daylight.  The Superskoda photos show the light at night.  The replacements have an additional pair of pins in the lower part of the connector - they dont'connect on the Karoq, and don't get it the way. Fitting took a minute.

 

Edited 11 March, 20215 yr by FlyingGecko

Cheers, will have a look at those.