Overview

The Skoda Octavia Estate is among the very best estate cars on sale, which also makes it one of our favourite family cars. It is relatively compact on the outside, so it’s easy enough to slot into most parking spaces, but substantially more spacious inside than most rivals. In fact, you’ll find the Octavia Estate’s boot is bigger than many wagons in the class above. A facelift for this fourth-generation model in 2024 sharpens-up the looks and boosts the standard equipment, maintaining its first-class appeal.

Put simply, if you need a car that can carry five and their luggage with the minimum of fuss, this is where you should start looking. We have a lot of experience with this model here at Parkers. As well as testing multiple versions the latest Octavia Estate facelift, we’ve also spent extended periods driving the pre-facelift model – including an ongoing long-term test of a 1.5-litre turbo petrol that’s focussed on assessing how practical this load lugger is for families with young children.

Previous models have fallen short of the commanding Volkswagen Golf, but the Mk4 Octavia has addressed this issue by largely matching its closely related stablemate (they’re very similar cars under the skin) for perceived quality, exceeding it in terms of user-friendly technology implementation, and placing a high priority on comfort.

The Octavia Estate’s 640-litre boot is also bigger than the 605 litres a VW Golf Estate provides. The Skoda also out capacities all other rivals, including the also related SEAT Leon Estate – although at 620 litres this gets closer than the Golf. Rivals from other manufactures, including the Ford Focus Estate, Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer, Kia Ceed Sportswagon and Toyota Corolla Touring Sports all fail to crack the 600-litre mark. The Peugeot 308 SW just about manages this, but not in every version.

Similarly, if you’re more focused on carrying capacity than prestige, then the Octavia is a value alternative to premium rivals such as the BMW 3 Series Touring, Mercedes C-Class Estate and Audi A4 Avant. Again, the Skoda has greater load capacity than all of them. As such, perhaps the greatest rival to the Octavia in most regards is the even larger Skoda Superb Estate.

The Octavia Estate line-up mirrors that of the hatchback, which means post-facelift the engine choice is down to two petrol and two diesel models, with an update to the range-topping vRS petrol to follow later in 2024. This is quite a reduction versus peak availability in the pre-facelift version, but with power outputs ranging from 116hp to 265hp there is still a reasonable breadth of choice for buyers.

The 150hp petrol and diesel models are our top choices, though rumours of the return of the plug-in hybrid may make that version worth waiting for, too.

There are three standard trim levels: SE Technology, SE L and Sportline. This is a small change versus the pre-facelift model as Sportline reappears and the most basic SE variant disappears, but means more standard equipment. All facelifted Octavia Estates come with LED headlights, 13.0-inch infotainment screen, 10.0-inch digital instrument cluster and more powerful wireless phone charging to go with their wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity.

Click through the following pages to read everything you need to know about the Skoda Octavia Estate including its practicality, how much it costs to run, what it’s like to live with – and read our verdict to find out whether we’d recommend buying one.