Is the Skoda Kodiaq still good enough to fight off cheaper Chinese SUVs? I spent a week with one to find out

Since it first went on sale in 2016, the Skoda Kodiaq has been one of the best family SUVs you can buy. It’s spacious, comfortable and easy to live with, but it’s facing ever more competition from China.

While the Kodiaq has been getting gradually more expensive – the first-generation car cost the equivalent of around £34,000 in 2016, whereas it now starts from over £41,000 – Chinese alternatives are coming onto the market for a lot less.

The Kodiaq I spent a week with was the Sportline plug-in hybrid, and with options it came to £51,000. You could save £1,325 by going without the deployable towbar, but it’s still a lot of money when you consider a Chery Tiggo 8 with even more standard equipment costs £36,545.

But let’s come back to money in a bit and focus on the car itself, because there are a few reasons that I’d rather have the Kodiaq.

The main one is the interior, because not only does it look smart and feel premium up front, it also has plenty of physical knobs and switches which make everything really easy to use. Turning off the beeps and bongs for speed warnings and lane-keeping is easy using the buttons on the steering wheel.

I especially like the “smart dials” which have little screens on them and can operate different functions by pressing on them – such as fan speed, heated seats and stereo volume.

There’s also loads of storage up front, with two glove boxes and a massive area under the central armrest. The door bins are also a good size and they’re lined with felt, but I did find the cup holders to be a bit too narrow for my travel cup. That’s not an issue I have in the Tiggo 8.

The other reason I’d choose the Kodiaq becomes apparent when you get behind the wheel. It’s much more comfortable and nicer to drive. The Tiggo 8 is fidgety over bumps and it feels vague and wallowy around the corners, whereas the Kodiaq is smoother and more secure.

Family SUVs don’t need to handle like sports cars, but the Kodiaq’s more accurate steering and better suspension make it more relaxing to drive.

You get plenty of room in the back of the Kodiaq, but the same can be said for the Tiggo 8. The Chery also feels posher in the rear seats, because the soft touch materials extend all the way to the back whereas Skoda has cheaped out and gone for hard plastics.

The Kodiaq also isn’t available as a seven-seater in PHEV guise, whereas the Tiggo 8 is. You do get a bigger boot in the Skoda though – with 745 litres on offer in the plug-in hybrid and up to 910 litres in five-seater petrol and diesel versions. The Chery tops out at 700 litres.

No matter how good the Kodiaq is, a price gap of over £14,000 is really hard to overcome. Thankfully there are a few ways of getting around this.

For starters, I wouldn’t bother with the Sportline version – I’d get the SE-L instead. It has pretty much the same amount of standard equipment, but it does without some of the sporty styling upgrades such as larger alloy wheels and blacked-out trim.

At the time of writing, you can get a Kodiaq SE-L PHEV for just over £36,000 on PCP finance. By the time you’ve added heated front and rear seats and a panoramic glass roof you’ll be closer to £38,000, so only around £1,500 more than the Chery.

The Chery Tiggo 8 may come with more standard equipment than the Kodiaq for that price, but I’d personally rather sacrifice things like ventilated seats and a head-up display for a car which is nicer to drive and has a more user-friendly cabin. It’s a really relaxing travel companion.

The Skoda Kodiaq should certainly be worried by the Chery Tiggo 8, because the value for money offered by the Chinese car is really hard to ignore – that’s why it’s our reigning Car of the Year. But after a week with it I reckon the Kodiaq still makes an excellent case for itself, even if the Tiggo 8 makes more sense from a value perspective.

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