Owning a Skoda Kodiaq is like being best friends with someone who’s just great at everything. The sort of person who’s really skilled at DIY, is captain of their local sports team, cooks haute cuisine as a hobby and has a cupboard full of various trophies they’ve picked up over the years. As it happens, the Skoda Kodiaq does have a couple of trophies, having won Best Value 7-seat SUV and Best Tow Car at the 2026 What Car? Awards.
The point is, the Skoda Kodiaq really can do it all. It handles the daily commute and school run without breaking a sweat, then at the weekend it transforms into the ideal adventure machine. It can take you, your family and all your outdoor gear into the back of beyond, while keeping everyone comfortable and helping to minimise your running costs – leaving you with more money to spend on having fun.
Here are all the reasons we think you should consider one.
Everyday excellence
Lives are hectic. Kids need to be taken to school, you need to get to work, there are meetings here, there and everywhere, relatives must be visited on occasion, shopping must be bought and brought home, and you need to get to the park to exercise the dog (and the children). But when you have a Skoda Kodiaq on your side, all of this is taken care of with no fuss, no bluster, and more than a little luxury.
You have the option of five or seven seats, depending on just how many you have in your clan. Even with all three rows in place, the seven-seater offers 340 litres of boot space – more than some hatchbacks. That expands to 745 litres with the rear seats down. The five-seater comes with a whopping 910 litres as standard, while both offer all the useful hooks, cubbies and nets you’d expect from a Skoda to help keep your cargo where you left it.
Second-row passengers in both versions benefit from sliding and reclining seats, turning every journey positively luxurious. There’s plenty of space up front too, with loads of tech to boot, including two wireless charging pads for your smartphone, both of which are cooled, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard, and a large 13inch touchscreen running Skoda’s latest MIB4 operating system for slick, intuitive interactions.
And you can stay in touch with your Skoda even when you’re miles away from it, using the MySkoda app. This allows you to check if your doors are locked from anywhere, honk the horn and flash the lights in a crowded car park, and even see how much fuel you have left.
Back in the cabin, there’s also configurable ambient lighting, so you can have precisely the hue your mood demands, and if you choose the Kodiaq PHEV, you can enjoy the benefit of up to 76 miles of battery-only running.
Weekend wonder
The Skoda Kodiaq isn’t just the perfect everyday-commuter and city-life machine. It’s also the ideal companion for active families who like to explore the path less trodden at weekends.
This is where the Kodiaq truly comes into its own, because it makes getting away from it all a lot easier than you might have thought.
Under the bonnet you get the choice of a range of highly efficient powertrains, comprising mild-hybrid petrol, petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid options. To get the most out of whichever powertrain you go for, opt for the Performance Package and you’ll get Dynamic Chassis Control featuring up to seven different driving modes*, and Dynamic Steering to further sharpen responses.
But if performance is really what floats your boat, the top-spec Kodiaq vRS is what you’ll be wanting. It’s powered by the same 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine found in the Volkswagen Golf GTI, pumping out 262bhp and 400Nm of torque with a 4x4 all-wheel drive system. The result is 0-62mph in just 6.4 seconds. It also gets Dynamic Chassis Control, ventilated disc brakes all round, and special vRS bucket seats. Not bad for a family SUV, eh?
You can also specify your Kodiaq with four-wheel drive on other trims, to make accessing remote adventure spots perfectly easy, or to assist when towing – a particular strength of the Kodiaq’s, as demonstrated by its Best Tow Car win.
The Kodiaq is more than capable of accommodating all of your sports kit, and whatever other adventuring nick knacks you take with you thanks to numerous storage cubbies around the cabin, including pockets in the doors, the backs of the seats, and even a Jumbo Box between the front seats that offers more than 5.0 litres of clever storage.
Tech that protects
Not only will the Skoda Kodiaq get you where you want to go with ease, it’ll protect you on the way. It’s filled with systems designed to prevent any kind of incident happening in the first place, and further tech to keep you safe when another driver’s carelessness makes an unplanned collision unavoidable.
To that end, the Kodiaq’s camera and radar-based systems are always on full alert, systems such as the Pedestrian Monitor, which can ‘see’ a person running out ahead and will slow the car accordingly. There’s also the Predictive Cruise Control, Lane Assist and Blindspot Monitoring that will all help keep you on the straight and narrow on motorways and dual carriageways.
And if the worst does occur, the multi-collision brake set-up applies the brake following a collision, to prevent the car from being involved in any further collisions, while the eight in-cabin airbags fitted as standard will help keep everyone from injury.
LED headlights and taillights are standard, to help you see and be seen, with smart Matrix LED lights available on certain trim levels.
When you reach the end of your journey, there are sensors fore and aft to help with parking, while a Driving Assistance Plus Package is available as an option on certain models that allow Remote Parking and Remote Trained Parking, in which the car ‘learns’ a parking manoeuvre and takes care of everything itself, while you stand outside the car and watch.
Adding value to your life
Another area in which the Skoda Kodiaq is streets ahead of competitors is value for money, which is vital in the expensive modern world. The range kicks off at just £39,390, with no fewer than three different versions ducking under the Government’s £40k Expensive Car Supplement.
For your £39k you’ll get a car that has standard equipment including LED lights, self-dimming electrically adjustable mirrors, a heated steering wheel, heated front seats, cruise control with speed assist, three-zone climate control and a rearview parking camera.
And of course, every Kodiaq features clever touches including an umbrella stored in the front door and a fuel filler that prevents you from topping up with the wrong fuel, and which features an ice scraper.
So, the Skoda Kodiaq is the perfect car for an active life. It can cope with all of the everyday tasks a family will need it to do on a daily basis, while keeping everyone comfortable, happy and safe. And then, when it comes time for outdoors fun at the weekend, it’s more than up to the job of taking everyone plus their sports kit into the back end of nowhere, before turning around and taking everyone home in total comfort at the end of a strenuous day having fun.
That’s what makes it the best friend who’s simply brilliant at everything.
*Snow Mode and Off-road Mode 4x4 variants only