How 'My' Skoda Kodiaq Rescued Our Terrible G-Wiz EV

You may recall I took in a Skoda Kodiaq as my new longtermer a few months ago. I’ve always been a fan of this car and it has been an extremely trusty servant for the CT video team on shoots this year. It has space for days, is incredibly comfortable, and most importantly - it got us out of a big hole on one of our shoots. I’ll get back to that shortly.

As mentioned in my first report, ‘my’ Kodiaq SE L has the optional seven-seat arrangement, although I’ve only had every one of those seats occupied on one occasion. This was doable despite the presence of two kids’ car seats and a buggy, although I was left wishing the Kodiaq was a little longer like some other seven-seater SUVs out there - it’d make the third row less cramped and the boot a more useful size.

The Kodiaq proved itself to be an awesome tracking vehicle when sent to work on the big BMW M car shoot for Car Throttle sister title Auto Express, and it was pretty frugal on its way there - handy given the bonkers fuel prices we have currently. It’s averaged 43mpg over 5000 miles, only a little down on the 45mpg I got out of the Karoq I ran a while ago (with the same 2.0-litre TDI engine), which I think is good going considering how much bigger and heavier the Kodiaq is. Also, as long as the third row of seats is folded, the boot is huge, so I’ve never had an issue fitting in our filming gear.

As for the not-so-good stuff, there - thankfully - isn’t much to report. I still think it’s a shame it doesn’t have a reversing camera as standard, but since our car was made, Skoda has given the range a bit of a shake-up. SE L trim no longer exists, but for around the same price, you can get an SE Drive or SE L Executive, both of which get the camera fitted from the factory. Meanwhile, I’ve started getting an annoying beep when the boot opens, and I haven’t yet found out why.

But as I mentioned earlier, the Kodiaq got us out of a spot of bother on a recent shoot. You may remember our ‘Living With A G-Wiz’ YouTube episode, in which Alex took our G-Wiz out onto the streets of Abingdon as he found out how easy it was to live with. Officially, the G-Wiz has around 50 miles of range but I reckon we didn’t have the best version of this car.

We were probably pushing around a maximum of 20 miles for the day when, as we left Abingdon, it ran out of steam as we crossed over the River Thames. Luckily, we found a car park a short distance from the bridge and were able to safely get it off the road. The Kodiaq was our support vehicle for the day and we had a tow rope in case of this eventuality. Cue Alex setting me the task of locating the towing eye.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’m a newbie to the world of towing and as you’ll see in the video, this was no easy feat for me. Fortunately, I found it and we got the G-Wiz attached to the Kodiaq. We had a few miles back to our base camp so this meant it would be my first time towing a car. I must say, I was quite petrified, especially as the G-Wiz would be going faster than it’s ever been as the Kodiaq hauled it down the road…

As we got to the end of our journey - and I cannot stress the timing enough - the rope decided to turn itself into two ropes, literally as we turned into our destination. Any second earlier and we would have been pushing the G-Wiz a lot further that day.

But the rope held up long enough and the car got us out of our sticky situation. So a big thank you to the Kodiaq, for everything it’s done so far and for saving us a big headache that day.