Skoda Australia's local boss has told Drive the Skoda Octavia wagon isn't going anywhere just yet, with another five years left on the clock.
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The Skoda Octavia wagon is here to stay, according to the brand’s local boss, despite sales of the body type continuing to slide downwards.
The fifth-generation Octavia has been on sale since 2021, with a refresh arriving locally earlier this year.
It is likely to be succeeded by a 2027 production version of Skoda’s fully-electric Vision O concept, which is set to be officially revealed at next week’s Munich motor show.
Skoda Australia Director, Lucie Kuhn, told Drive the current Octavia “will be with us for the whole generation”, suggesting it will live on until the end of the decade.
It is therefore possible the petrol-powered version could, at least temporarily, live on alongside its electric counterpart.
“I think the car will be with us for the whole generation. We launched the [facelift] a few months ago, so we’ve got another five years to go,” Kuhn told Drive.
So far this year, there have been 487 Octavias sold in Australia. In 2024, there were 662 wagons sold locally for the whole calendar year, plus further examples of the liftback.
The Octavia has been the most popular wagon sold here since 2020, with around two-thirds of sales made up of the hotter RS variant.
In 2024, 10,227 Outbacks were sold in Australia.
Despite the dwindling numbers, Kuhn insists there are still plenty of wagon loyalists out there.
“There is still a pretty high segment of wagon-lovers. There is a solid base of customers who used to buy wagons in the past, and they stick to that type of car,” she told Drive.
“I think it's also important to keep them (wagons) in our portfolio as we are trying to cover the demands across all the customers.”
The Skoda Vision O concept is expected to pave the way for an all-electric Octavia, using the brand’s new Modern Solid design language that just debuted on a production car on the Elroq medium SUV.
It is expected to be based on the Volkswagen Group’s next-generation Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) rather than the current MEB architecture.
The model has been teased by the car maker but will be formally revealed in Munich on September 8.
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A born-and-bred newshound, Kathryn has worked her way up through the ranks reporting for, and later editing, two renowned UK regional newspapers and websites, before moving on to join the digital newsdesk of one of the world’s most popular newspapers – The Sun. More recently, she’s done a short stint in PR in the not-for-profit sector, and led the news team at Wheels Media.
