Skoda's Yeti out of its comfort zone?
40-degree heat and deep sand — Central Australia is no place for a Himalayan snowman, but how about a compact SUV?Skoda has introduced its new Yeti compact SUV to the Australian motoring media in the inhospitable reaches of the Finke Gorge in the Northern Territory.
As the pictures here show, the Finke National Park is no place for an untried SUV, but the Yeti made up with underbody protection what it lacked in ground clearance, wheel articulation and traction. All the cars succeeded in reaching the Boggy Hole stop where we sojourned overnight before returning to the black-top the following morning. That's a round trip of over 40km offroad — with just one puncture to show for the trails and tribulations. If it seemed like an unnecessarily harsh introduction to the country for the new SUV, Head of Skoda Australia, Matthew Wiesner had an explanation.
"It's a good all-rounder ... we kept these things absolutely standard," he said. "We could have cheated and messed around with them and raised them... changed the wheels and the tyres and stuffed them around, but we chose not to. The point wasn't the fact that we were going to expect anybody to do this, the point is — as far as we're concerned — we wanted to do something pretty damn interesting; create a bit of adventure."
Amid the deep sand and rocky outcrops the Yeti proved it was no shrinking violet when it came to going bush, although the little Skoda did need to be retrieved from boggy sand on several occasions. The very fact that the car crewed by motoring.com.au had to be rescued by an NT Parks & Wildlife LandCruiser — which itself struggled to find traction in the sand — is a testament that the Yeti has enough offroad ability to get you into trouble.
Driving the Yeti in sand is pretty simple though, when it comes right down to it — and you don't have to fall victim to deep sand. Nail the throttle, get a run-up and then just keep the foot firmly pressed all the way down to the firewall with the accelerator pedal in between. As for steering in sand? Stay in the wheel tracks and just let the car find its own way.
The technique for driving the Yeti in sand is a metaphor for Skoda's approach to marketing the car here: full steam ahead and damn the torpedos. And no wonder; the importer expects the Yeti will be highly lucrative in the local market. Skoda forecasts 60 per cent of Yeti sales will be 4WD variants and Wiesner intimated that it has the potential to be the importer's largest-selling product in Australia ("As far as we're concerned it's our volume product"). Furthermore, Wiesner indicated that the various colour combinations available would allow for buyers to be "individualistic", as are buyers of the Fabia Monte Carlo. "Yeti's going to do the same thing," he said.
The Yeti for Australia is already a known quantity on paper; you can read our news stories concerning pricing and the new 118TSI variant recently announced and the first drive by motoring.com.au overseas. Our local drive of the Yeti will be published shortly.
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