Skoda Superb Sportline 4x4

The Czech saloon takes holiday duties – and a blast up a Jersey hill climb – in its stride

THERE AIN’T NO REPLACEMENT FOR displacement, as the old saying goes. But when it comes to a family of four’s week away it’s boot capacity rather than engine capacity that’s king. So when the time came to book the ferry to Jersey, it was our Skoda Superb’s registration number that was top of my list.

As expected, the big Czech machine proved to be the perfect companion. Its vast, 690-litre boot swallowed everything I threw at it, while the relaxed ride and hushed refinement made mincemeat of the motorway drag down to Poole, where we jumped on the ferry and headed to the Channel Islands.

Once there, the blanket 40mph speed limit and narrow, wall-lined roads meant that chances to exploit the car’s 276bhp blown four-pot were few and far between. However, while you can take the boy out of evo for a week, you can’t take evo out of the boy, and it didn’t take me long to seek out some fun.

Despite its small size, Jersey has a thriving motorsport scene, including its own two-day stage rally and the occasional race along some of the long, wide beaches. Yet it’s the Bouley

‘ The switchback climb measures just over half-a-mile long and is particularly tricky, but on it the Skoda felt surprisingly adept’

Bay Hill Climb that’s arguably the highlight, and upon seeking out the course, which is public road most of the time, it wasn’t hard to see why. After the door mirror-scrapingly narrow routes found on most of the island, the wide and snaking strip used for the competition looks like it’s been lifted from a European mountain range and dropped from the sky onto this tiny island off the coast of France.

I took the opportunity to try a couple of runs up and down, to both get a feel for the course and to have a play with the Skoda’s driver modes. The switchback climb measures just over half-a-mile long and is particularly tricky, starting quickly before sucking you into a number of deceptively tight hairpins. I was never going to beat the 37.6sec record set by Wallace Menzies in a DJ Firestorm single-seater in 2013 – especially not with the 40mph speed limit – but the Skoda was surprisingly adept. With the dampers in their Sport setting the Superb was transformed and felt impressively planted and agile, with the combination of the torquey turbocharged unit and four-wheel drive firing it effortlessly out of the tight turns.

I’m not going to pretend it was the most thrilling and engaging experience, but for such a big, practical and unassuming-looking machine it was a remarkably polished performance and a further reminder of why our respect for this car continues to grow.