Hot shot Octavia due here next year

The Director of Skoda Australia, Michael Irmer, has told motoring.com.au that the Octavia RS 230 unveiled in Geneva earlier this month will go on sale in Australia within 12 months perhaps.

"It's too early to confirm the timing on this. Next year, I'd say..." he said, during the local launch of the new Octavia Scout.

Named for its peak power rating in horsepower, the range-topping Octavia develops 169kW and is reported to be capable of reaching 250km/h, making it the fastest Octavia ever to reach production.

The local Skoda boss says the car will be sold here in both Octavia body styles – wagon and liftback sedan.

"That's the kind of offering Australia demands," Irmer explained.

Hopefully Skoda will have resolved its supply issues for the Aussie market by then. The company sold 3853 cars here last year – an 8.4 per cent gain on the 2013 tally – but could have sold more if the factory had been able to supply the right mix of models and variants during the year.

Octavia, being Skoda's most popular product in Australia, has been particularly hamstrung by lack of supply. There's currently a nine-month waiting list in this market for Octavia RS variants, but Irmer says that Skoda is already on top of the problem.

"We increased production," he said. "We doubled production from what we initially planned, and we'll see if this is now enough. We've got to be careful to not oversupply the market – to keep a nice business.

"And if need be we'll step it up further."

According to the local Skoda boss, it's not just Australian customers who have been kept waiting for the Octavia RS, which is being pumped out by the factory at the new rate of 700 a week, versus the 350 units previously built in any given week.

"I think the wait is not unique to Australia," Irmer said. "The wait is also in other European markets... in the UK and so on. They just have the benefit of shorter shipment times than we do."

The doubling of production for the RS aims to meet global demand, but the entire Australian allocation for Octavia of all kinds has been doubled too.

Irmer says that the overall sales split for the Octavia in Australia is one of the richest in the world, and the percentage of RS models sold here may be higher than anywhere else in the world, although the Skoda chief couldn't be "100 per cent" certain.

"Scout, RS and Elegance together make up 70 per cent of the [Octavia] mix, and that is definitely the highest in the world.

"RS itself is 40 per cent... also on the very high side," he said, but also noted that RS achieves as much as 60 per cent some months.

The majority of those cars are highly optioned too, and are sought after with tech pack and black pack options.

With Australia's well-known affinity for hotter, sporting variants of passenger cars, there's much resting on the brand's ability to deliver the Octavia RS in the sort of numbers to meet demand.

"The RS is, at the moment, the heart of the brand," Irmer acknowledged.