Production of 2013 Skoda Octavia begins

Production of the 2013 Skoda Octavia (Laura in India) has begun at the automaker’s facility in Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic. The sedan is expected to go on sale in Europe at the end January 2013 and will arrive in the sub-continent a few months later.

The Czech automaker’s facility has, in its words, undergone a comprehensive modernisation and expansion programme in view of the new Octavia. The most important upgrade is the increase in the Octavia/Rapid production line’s capacity step by step from 800 to 1,200 cars per day.      

Production of the new Octavia has entailed a whole host of measures such as the commissioning of a new body shop and a fully automated interior painting line as part of the expansion of production capacity. In addition, a state-of-the-art press line will begin operations in early 2013.

The 2013 Skoda Octavia made its global debut in Prague, Czech Republic a few days ago. While the design for the 2013 Octavia has been influenced by the Vision D concept, its features and underpinnings are based on the Volkswagen’s MQB platform, which will is also support most future models of VW group. The new Octavia will be powered by the same set of mills that are present in new seventh-generation Golf.

Skoda will be offering this new model with choice of four petrol and four diesel engines. The petrol range includes 1.4TSI in two states of tune – 120bhp and 138bhp. The bigger units include the 1.8TSI pumping 177bhp and 2.0-litre TSI for the vRS version. The diesel options are 1.6-litre TDI developing either 103bhp or 108bhp, along with 2.0-litre TDI available in 147bhp and 181bhp guise.

The 2013 Octavia is a part of Skoda’s strategy in which it plans to launch a new or facelifted model every six months till 2015. As a part of this strategy it also hopes to sell 1.5 million vehicles annually by 2018. It is likely that Skoda will revive the Octavia brand when it launches the car next year as it was more successful than the Laura badge.