• Practicality is the Superb’s strong point
• Huge interior with vast boot
• An excellent family car

How much space is there?

It seems with Skoda’s largest model you can have form and function. The Superb Estate has a fine, even classy, exterior appearance but Skoda hasn’t sacrificed interior space in the pursuit of style. Far from it, in fact – the Superb is vast inside.

Whether you’re in the front or rear of the passenger compartment you’ll have loads of head, leg and shoulder room. The seats are mounted relatively high as well, making it easier to get in and out. There’s also a design feature that’s been a Superb mainstay since the first generation’s introduction in 2002 – and an idea only shared with Rolls-Royce: door mounted umbrellas.

Boot space and storage

With the rear seats up, the boot measures an impressive 660 litres. It’s a best-in-class figure, although the significantly smaller Peugeot 308 SW matches this number (but weirdly the 508 SW doesn’t even come close). If you go for the Superb iV plug-in hybrid, the boot space falls to 510 litres due to the battery pack taking up some room. 

With the 60:40 split rear seats tumbled over that volume increases to another class best of 1,950-litres. Just be aware that without the optional variable height boot floor, the cargo bay surface is not completely flat, so you’d be wise to invest in that if you’ll regularly have the seats folded for heavy loads.

Aiding practicality further is what Skoda refers to as the Boot Net Programme – a series of retaining nets for keeping loose items neatly secure, while many also feature an electric tailgate. This can be set to only open up to a particular height, to prevent you damaging the paintwork on a garage ceiling for instance.

We’ve named it one of our best cars for dog owners. We’ve also done a Superb Estate vs Octavia Estate comparison, useful if you’ve also been looking at Skoda’s slightly smaller internal rival.

Around the cabin are a number of conveniently-sized and shaped storage compartments and cubbies, including an ingenious feature already found on the Superb hatchback – in the front cup holder module is a dimpled rubber base and a narrower slot that allows bottles to be undone single-handedly, useful when driving for minimal distraction.

Is it easy to park?

Well, you’re going to need a bit of room – the Superb Estate is nearly 4.7m long, which will make it a squeeze into some parking spaces.

Fortunately visibility is pretty good, and you can have the usual selection of front and rear parking sensors, plus a reversing camera. There’s even an official kit to retrofit the latter should be shopping used and unable to find a car with a camera already fitted.

Safety

• Five-star Euro NCAP rating
• Driver assitance tech available
• 2019 facelift brought more advanced kit

The Superb has five-star Euro NCAP score, and although this dates from 2015 (the test has gotten harder since) it should provide safe habour for you and your family. It certainly comes packed with equipment, as even the entry-level grades are loaded with kit designed to minimise crashes and the consequences of them.

Not only is electronic stability control fitted as standard, so are other key electronic features like emergency city braking, multi-collision braking (to mitigate against rolling along into additional crashes) and a pedestrian safety system.

While bright LED lights are standard, a range of more advanced driver assistance kit is available. Adaptive cruise control has evolved into a newer Predictive Cruise Control system that reads traffic signs and has the ability to automatically adapt the car’s system to the conditons, as well as coming to a halt and moving off again. 

From the middle of 2020 there’s a system called Emergency Assist that can automatically move the car to the side of the road and to a halt in the event of the driver being incapacitated. Front assist now has the ability to detect pedestrians.

Blindspot monitoring and lane-assist are also available.

Watch the Euro NCAP crash test video