If it had been an automatic (DSG), I would have kept it for even longer.

BHPian asit.kulkarni93 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

In the last one year, the car actually saw less usage. It was finally sold off on Monday with the ODO at 196k KMs. The AC was overhauled this year. Rest it drove really well. If it were a DSG, I would have kept it for longer but for my typical Nasik and Mumbai runs it was getting tiresome to drive a manual.

Coming from a Toyota Corolla, the Laura according to many was a risky proposition. I am glad they were proved wrong. These cars are built to last. With the right parts and diagnosis, they can be very reliable. With a humongous boot and that amazing independent suspension, the Laura was a delight to drive. The 1.9 TDi PD was outdated but with a stage 2 remap and downpipe, it was a thrilling experience. The steering feedback surprisingly was amazing. After all these years, I now realise why VAG owners don't move to other brands. The replacement will be finalised this week and hopefully is another VAG.

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We flew to Delhi, picked up the car, and drove it to Kochi. The 2750 km road trip was a piece of cake for the Laura.

BHPian Bibendum90949 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The Story of HR 26 to KL 07

Since the time I've started lurking on Team-BHP and long before I became a member, Behemoth is a handle that I've come across many times. More so after I bought a Laura MT in 2011. But never in my mind, I thought we would meet one day and buy his beloved car for my close friend.

For the benefit of members reading this, let me write how Behemoth's HR registered car ended up with my friend in Kochi.

It was a few months ago that I pinged him the first time and ever since we used to chat a bit about Laura. One day he happened to indicate that his car is nearing the 10-year mark and owing to the NCR diesel ban, he will have to sell it. Knowing how well he has maintained the car, I was interested and recommended it to a close friend who has been planning to buy a German car for some time and he was very specific on Laura. But there was a little twist to the tale on two counts. Behemoth's family member outside NCR got keen on his car and he was gearing up to sell the car to him. But later the buyer changed his mind and wanted to buy a new car. This car was up for grabs again. In the interim, my friend ended up picking a VW Jetta TDI DSG. Even then, his dream of having a Laura has not quite died. I had opened a thread regarding this on his behalf.

Over a couple of WhatsApp chats with Behemoth, the price was agreed upon and my friend paid an advance immediately. He earlier had shared a few images of the car and my friend gave the free hand to me to do the decision making. We would've still bought the car even without seeing the car's picture. Eventually, we flew down to Delhi and picked up the car and drove down to Kochi.

The car I must say has been immaculately maintained. After having driven my Laura MT TDI for 190k kms, I almost know the car and its behaviour like the back of my hands. Behemoth's car drove like a charm. There are zero rattles or squeaks. He was kind enough to do a thorough check of the car before handing it over to us. He also got the wheel balancing and alignment job carried out at his preferred Bosch FNG and kept the car ready. It helped us to save half a day too after I'd missed my flight from Bangalore earlier in the day. My friend arrived from Kochi separately the same day morning. We later reached Behemoth's home and then drove to Bosch garage in his Jeep Compass. After picking up the car, we came back and had lunch at his home before we bid adieu. We could sense that he was parting it with a heavy heart but at the same time he took consolation from the fact it's going to be in another home that will take good care of his beloved car.

VAG TDI is a gem of an engine on many counts and its frugality is well documented. And as we know, the best Skodas we got here in India were during that period long before the word localisation caught the fancy of the VAG group. IIRC, the Laura's were CKD units and it shows in the build quality and the cars of that vintage still feel tight and almost new. We drove the car at a steady pace of 100 kmph thereabouts and as expected it returned 25-26 kmpl and at times more, so much so that with a full tank fill at Hyderabad, we managed to reach Kochi with still a quarter tank diesel left. I'll post some of the MID snaps for reference. The actual FE must be 0.75-1 kmpl less than MID figures. A couple of tankful to tankful calculations too showed 25 kmpl consistently. We were sedately driving all through the journey and well within legal speed limits. With me driving a larger part of the journey and the car handling well and feeling so nice and tight, I was firming up my mind to do a complete suspension overhaul on my Laura as soon as I reach Bangalore. The same was kept in abeyance since the onset of the pandemic. This drive made my love even deeper for Laura. These are such brilliant and timeless cars and with the right care and attention can serve you well for years. They can still give modern cars a run for their money. The whole trip was uneventful with His grace and the car just lived up to the expectations. It seemed like just another drive for the car. The 2750 kms trip was like a piece of cake for it. We didn't feel any sort of fatigue though we drove only during the day and was covering 600-700 kms a day. Towards the end of the journey, my friend who's not very keen on driving was not leaving the driver's seat at all. I knew by then that he has totally fallen for it. A non-enthusiastic driver has turned into one during the course of the journey. After reaching my home in Bangalore, I made him drive my Laura too. He has driven it before too but this was a back to back drive. And he couldn't feel any difference with my 190k run car vs the 85k run car of his except for the deterioration in suspension performance. His impression of these cars has grown further since then and today he's a happy Laura owner and he plans to spruce up the ride with some thoughtful upgrades.

Few pictures clicked during the journey and also the car with KL07 regn plate.

At the India Gate which the car will never see again.

A quick shower en route.

At a hotel in Gurgaon.

In Agra.

Somewhere in MP.

MID showing the FE at various stages of the journey. At one point it even returned 33 kmpl, I wasn't surprised one bit.

My car and Behemoth's car together at my Blore home. They may have crossed their paths before at Aurangabad factory as both cars are of similar vintage.

Finally at her new home with the new regn plate.

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At this point, I really forgot why I came in and went out with a Laura L&K which looked really out of shape and I was still unsure why and what I did there.

BHPian onej_maverick recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Background:

At this point, almost a year and a half back, I had an A6 C7 3.0 TDI as my primary car, and thought I needed a second car which should be abuse friendly with decent ground clearance and should be able to do most of the short city runs. Also my wife might rarely use that car. This was the criteria, obviously it also needed to be cheap to buy. I was thinking around Rs 3 lakh.

Naturally, I was ready to give up these aspects, I really value in cars in general:

• Mature suspension
• Good quality interiors
• Like most of us here Power

In return, I expected:

• Reliability
• Decent ground clearance (With the A6, raising and lowering the air suspension was tiring, and it might scrape even when raised)

Cars Shortlisted:

Naturally since I wanted reliability, the first brand that came to mind was Toyota. There were a bunch of diesel Corolla Altis slightly above my budget. Was also thinking about a small Maruti or Hyundai hatchback. Suddenly i thought a Chevrolet would be cheaper to buy, my head was all over the place. But i made up my mind that i will go for the Corolla.

So I took my friend, who is also the one who takes care of my parts. He is an ex-Skoda head mechanic. Just to check if the car is alright. We did a test drive, it was the top end Altis diesel, and it was alright, I was okay with it. Ground clearance was better than the A6, Superb and 1st gen Octavia I have lived with, in the past.

And this happens

My friend: This will not work for you! (With a laugh)

Me: Why not? It fits my Criteria

My friend: Let me predict the future for you now, this will sit in your home used, you will stop using it after a couple of weeks

Me: What you trying to tell me now?

My friend: *Points a broken/abandoned Skoda Laura in the yard *

Me: No way, it's too broken, too old, too much for a 2nd car

My friend: Let's just ask for a test drive, I have 3 engines, 2 gearboxes and everything you might need at my garage, why do you care then?

Me: *Scratching my head* we didn't come for this, but a test drive wouldn't hurt

Initial impression

• Car was dirty
• Had a million dents
• Rear wheel arch seemed crushed
• Almost 10 years old

After entering the car:

• The car didn't start
• Christmas lights on the instrument cluster
• It had 1,38,000 on the ODO
• Seats were neat and clean
• Few AC vents were broken
• No glove box (literally)
• AC was not working even after jump starting

At this point, I had that *I told you so* face. My friend didn’t hesitate for a moment, he swapped the battery from his Laura (which is his daily driver) to this car. And suddenly all the errors were gone, AC magically worked, engine sounded very clean with no belt or excess noise, there was a little tappet noise, but we knew it was because the car was not used for a while.

The Drive

• No front shock absorbers! LOL. The front was bouncing like there is no tomorrow and it was fun
• 2.0 CR Engine and DQ250 gearbox seemed to be solid, didn’t feel like 1,38,000 km done
• Clutch and flywheel felt new
• Rear shocks were alright
• Brakes were sharp
• All 4 Injectors were new
• ECM was new (the old one was in the boot)

Being an ex-Skoda guy, he quickly checked the service history, and we came to know that the previous owner had just spent 1.5 L on the car just a year back. Explains the new injectors and ECM.

What next?

We purchased the car. At this point, I really forgot why I came in and went out with a Laura L&K which looked really out of shape and I was still unsure why and what I did there.

Works planned

• All panels to be repainted
• All four shocks to be replaced along with bushes (Bilsteins or Sachs? Okay, Bilstein, was an easy choice for me)
• Order broken vents online
• Get a glove box from a total loss vehicle
• New battery

Unplanned work (how I got carried away, with this supposedly second car)

• Full LED headlights
• RS bumper with DRL
• Replace headlight lens (ordered online)
• Better tyres (Conti comfort series)
• 10 inch touch screen with android auto and can bus support
• Changed the alloys to MOMO, anyway 2 OE wheels were bent, so it made sense to change all 4. But stuck to 16 inches (This was done recently)

After the above work was done, which took a month in total, here is the review of the car

What do I like?

• Solid car, feels solid, drives well, feels safe
• 6 airbags, ESP, Traction control, EDL, Brake Assist (Safety covered)
• Rides and Handles really well for the height of the car, rear independent suspension definitely helps
• This Engine and Gearbox combinations is so much fun, down shifts are dramatic though not fast
• Great fuel efficiency, I am getting 14+ km/l in Chennai consistently
• Looks great with the RS bumper
• Very good driving position especially compared to the A6 (I'm 6 foot 4 inches tall)
• Awesome 12 speaker audio system
• Sharp brakes, never needed to get used to it, and never made me feel nervous
• Huge boot and very practical with the notch back design
• More than enough ground clearance to tackle our roads

What I don't like?

• Rattling sound from the dashboard, super annoying, especially on rough roads
• No sunroof on the L&K? *cough* 2021 Octavia
• Steering is heavy at low speeds (2010 version)
• The wooden trim on the L&K doesn’t go well with the interiors
• AC is just enough
• Rear legroom is average
• Sound insulation isn’t as good as the Superb
• Definitely going to cost more to maintain than a corolla

How do I feel now?

Honestly, I never would have imagined I would be saying this, but this is my favourite car I have ever owned. It’s quick, it handles well, the right size, fun too, convenience of the automatic gearbox, great audio system. This even made me question if I really need the Audi. Yes, the Audi is super quick 250 BHP, Quattro and can do stupid speeds, but I’m getting older, I have had all the fun in the 20's, now I’m entering the 30's. Without me realising, I’m appreciating better seating position more than doing 0-100 6.5s, practicality more than super soft interiors and taking my dogs with me more than the track days.

This also pushed me to make one of the hardest decisions of my life, selling the A6 I loved. I’m going to write a review of that special machine soon.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.

Owning an older generation German car is a delightful experience in a lot of ways only a petrol head can understand. However, there is a very dark side of that ownership experience which is pretty much a nightmare - unavailability of parts most of the times & ridiculous pricing if they're available at the ASC.

BHPian vsaravind007 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Owning an older generation German car is a delightful experience in a lot of ways only a petrol head can understand. However, there is a very dark side of that ownership experience which is pretty much a nightmare - unavailability of parts most of the times & ridiculous pricing if they're available at the ASC. This is in my opinion why most enthusiastic people change their cars as they age even though they don't want to do it whole heartedly, parts become too hard to obtain even if money isn't a problem. For most people, the time & effort is simply not worth the hassle. Reason why this DIY was attempted is because of such a reason - Super rarity of an instrument cluster LCD & the eye watering cost of replacing it at an ASC. Main reason why this DIY happened is the free time I got due to the COVID-19 triple lockdowns here in Kerala.

The Problem

There is a peculiar issue with the first batch of Skoda Laura CBU cars that came to India. Not just on Lauras, this is there in other VAG cars of the same time. The LCD MFD in the instrument cluster on the top variant, L&K goes dim on one side as the car ages. The reason for this is simple, the LCD module is actually two physical LCD modules glued together, both halves have independent electrical connectors, if the LCD driver on one side goes bad that side goes totally off or becomes less bright - This is not an issue with the backlight LEDs, LCD module itself is the issue. VAG quickly identified the problem & from next model year onwards, they revised the design & introduced an LCD panel that isn't prone to this issue. The problem started on my car about 1.5 years back, just before the COVID-19 first wave. I was able to procure a used one from a parts car for swapping it out & learnt that its not possible. It has been bugging me ever since, even though I wasn't able to use the car like I used to thanks to COVID-19, it was still bugging me every time I sit in the car, could be my OCD, but it was really bothering me every single time! Remember that the car is about 15 years old now!

Potential Solutions

There are two mainstream solutions to this issue:

1. Replace the LCD module with a new one - This is the cheapest option if it can be sourced, this type of LCD was in production for only a very short period of time, probability of getting a working used one is very less. Module is available in Aliexpress for around 6k INR, but since we cannot buy from Ali anymore, thats out of the question. Also, thinking about the cost of the unit, its pretty expensive. There is one risk to this approach, if something on the cluster board is broken, replacing the LCD won't fix it, no way to conclude the problem module without swapping out the LCD module as well.

2. Replace the cluster as a whole - This is ASC approach, it is possible to get a new cluster & swap out the old one from ASC. Unfortunately its not possible to get an old cluster from a parts car and replace it, unlike other manufacturers, VAG cars have a very complex immobilizer system and cluster is one module having immobilizer information. It is possilble to swap the EEPROM module, but the model numbers must match 1:1, the cluster on my car is not swappable with the model with the updated LCD, connectors are same, but there are a lot of differences, how do i know? I bought a used one from the same year thinking its swappable, on swapping the EEPROM, came to know that its not at all compatible - the car started without issues, but there were a bunch of dancing lights on the dash. I'm not mentioning the cost of replacing this at the ASC, just know that you can buy a used car for the same price .

My Solution

I was trying to get a replacement LCD through my FNG. Due to COVID-19, that went nowhere. During that time, I came across a video by the Humble Mechanic about an aftermarket MFD display called ColorMFA.

This gave me the idea to go by the DIY route. The ColorMFA is a cluster upgrade made by a Russian guy. It costs a lot, but it looks cool & very functional. Unfortunately, its not available or compatible with the Laura (Octavia Mk2). There was an unfinished project that I started a while back, an app for my car - The idea of the app was to control the windows, lights and a few other things through a mobile app via bluetooth. That project never got finished due to the sheer amount of time needed to decode the CAN messages. Now due to the COVID-19 lockdown, I had plenty of time in hand and decided to tackle this on my own.

Below are the requirements i've set for myself:

• It must look & feel like the OEM display
• Must have all the functionalities that I use on the original screen
• It must not drain the battery if the car isn't driven for some time
• Must show all the errors/warnings that the OEM screen shows
• It must not create any catastrophic failures - Power train CAN Bus was't tapped due to this specific reason.
• Must be easy to go back to stock if i decide to sell the car in future
• Add some additional features such as battery monitor, boost gauge & a few others

For this to workout, I needed to get the following done:

• Source an LCD display that can fit inside the cluster & easily drivable through a microcontroller
• Develop a controller board with CAN Bus interface that can communicate with the car's convenience bus.
• Decode/reverse engineer the CAN Bus data packets to get all the information I needed
• Control the powering up/down of LCD and other modules based on car unlock/lock status - This is very important as this could lead to battery drains.

The OEM LCD is slightly smaller in the cluster cavity, which is noticable if you look close enough. I had a 3.5 inch LCD screen which I bought for a different project did fit perfectly, this module can be driven by a parallel interface using a microcontroller. I started out with an STM32 microcontroller, did the CAN Bus implementation on it & all was going well. After a day or two, I killed the module by accidentally supplying 12V - I had no spares for the burnt board & COVID-19 lockdowns were in effect. That forced me go with what I had laying around - An Arduino Nano, this is a very restrictive microcontroller but was enough to get the job done. I have quite a few number of these low cost microcontrollers in my parts bin. The LCD I chose initially was really hard to program on, everything had to be doe by hand - if you want to show a text on screen that is right aligned, you've to find the character dimension of the font, multiply that by the number of characters in the text you want to display and subtract it from the width of the screen and use that value as the origin of the text! This was pretty tedious obviously & showing images was super tough, it was really hard to implement the UI on it.

Decided to hold the UI development and started concentrating on the CAN Bus decoding part of the project. This was easier this time as I attempted something similar a while back.

The Laura has 3 independent CAN Buses:

• Drivetrain CAN Bus - High speed bus that is critical, used by engine, brakes, airbag & power steering. Any errors in this bus will shut down the engine
• Convenience CAN Bus - Low speed bus, instrument cluster, door electronics, interior functions are driven by this bus
• Infotainment CAN Bus - Low speed bus, radio, amplifier, steering control etc are driven by this bus

Decided not to mess around with the drivetrain CAN bus, its a critical system & I didn't want to mess with the reliability aspect of the car. Convenience bus was the bus of choice. It can be easily accessed from behind the stereo head unit, I tapped the bus at the connector and extended the bus with a long wire routed via the glove box. Used the free software CanHacker along with an Arduino based hardware interface to intercept the CAN messages flying through the bus. Identifying and decoding messages are a really time consuming job. You've to look at messages that are changing when you do an action and decode what you want based on what you see as change on screen. Below is a screenshot of the CANHacker application sniffing the CAN Bus.

Obviously this was going to take a lot of time, luckily I'm not the first person sniffing around a VAG CAN Bus! I found a Google Sheet where someone has decoded a lot of CAN Messages of a Golf MKV GTI Convenience Bus. About 60% of CAN Bus messages were the same on both cars (thanks to VW), some required modifications to how they're interpreted though. Most of my time was spent on decoding the door open/close status. Some didn't work at all, for example the coolant temperature - it never returned the correct value.

By this time, I had a proof of concept running, I was able to get the following details from the CAN Bus:

• Odo meter reading
• Door status
• Seat belt status
• Outside temperature
• Parking brake status
• Windshield washer fluid status
• Reserve fuel / Low fuel status
• Oil level low status
• Coolant level status
• Battery voltage
• Engine RPM
• Vehicle speed
• Cluster light level knob value - This knob controls the light intensity of buttons, cluster and switches inside the cabin. This is an important feature that I use on long night drives
• Steering stalk buttons - Up/Down & OK buttons, currently these are being used for page navigation just like the OEM MFD.

I wasn't able to decode the time from CAN Bus data correctly, hence I decided to go with a separate module for time keeping. As an additional feature, I've added a digital compass module to my system which will show a compass on the MFD. I used a TIP122 darlington transistor to control the power to modules - this is important because if the modules are kept ON, they'll drain the battery within a few days, especially the LCD needed to be turned off when the car is not in use. For trip data, I'm using the EEPROM thats part of the RTC module.

By this time, I came to the conclusion that the LCD module that I'm using isn't going to cut it, it was too much work & the results were not that impressive - too much flickering and screen tearing on changing values. I had a Nextion Enhanced HMI module in my parts bin - This was again part of an unfinished project, I bought this module to build an LiFePO4 powerwall for my house, plan was to use the Nextion module as the interface to the powerwall. It never got finished (never actually started to be honest) because of reasons, but it did help me here! Developing UI on a Nextion HMI is easy, we can use Photoshop or any other drawing tool to create graphics & use Nextion provided controls such as buttons/text to render whatever we want. It also has a scripting language in place that can be used to write logic within pages. The main advantage of Nextion is that, graphics rendering work is offloaded from the microcontroller, it uses a simple serial interface to change values on screen and for changing pages. Nextion has a GUI application that can be used to design pages through drag & drop. Main advantage here is that, it has a built in simulator. You can validate the functionality before burning the code to hardware, pretty neat!

Nextion Editor:

On a high level, this is how the whole system looks like:

The real time clock module & the compass module communicate over I2C bus with the Arduino while the CAN Bus transceiver communicates over SPI bus. Simple Serial communication is used to send data to the LCD module. Below logic flow diagram shows how the power rail & comms is controlled:

Results

Mess of files!

Prototype board:

Please excuse the mess!

Video

In the video, you'll be able to see almost all of the functionalities, including the dimming of LCD backlight. You can also see that the unit turns itself off after about 20 seconds of locking the car.

Things That Work

Below are the features that work correctly without issues as of now:

• Odo reading
• Trip reading - resetting works
• Battery voltage reading
• Time
• Outside temperature
• Compass / heading
• Door status - All 6 doors
• Parking brake warning
• Seat belt warning
• Trip data - Time since start, distance since start
• Vehicle speed
• RPM vs Speed Graph - This was a tryout, not sure how this will be useful, added for fun!

Pending Items / Issues

As of now, the MFD works fine, however its not without problems. Below are the issues that needs to be sorted:

• Convert the prototype to an actual PCB - I've already created the PCB design & placed an order with a PCB manufacturer for this. Final PCB with all modules will be 1/4th the size of the current prototype.
• Some UI elements needs refinement, on the above screenshot, the "m" of "am" is clipped, This is because the width of that text box is slightly shorter, there are a few such issues across pages.
• Currently trip data doesn't show decimal values - This is an issue, original MFD shows decimal values, however mine doesn't! This is because I'm calcuating the trip data by saving the odo reading to memory at the time of reset & taking the difference of current reading and the reading when trip was reset. The odo reading available in the convenience CAN Bus doesn't have decimal values. This is an important feature that needs to be fixed.
• Settings menu is missing - On the orignal MFD, there is a settings menu for configuring the coming home & leaving home time, units & winter tyres - Need to implement this
• Implement range/distance to empty, average speed of trip
• Implement way to reset trip data on the fly
• Implement bulb blown messages - If there is a blown bulb, the original MFD will show throw an error with details of blown bulb. This data is available in the bus, need to decode & code that in.
• Implement boost gauge, intake air temp, EGT & coolant temperature - This will need KLine reading, for future as KLine interfacing ICs are experiencing shortage as part of the global auto chip shortage.

I'm currently running the setup along side the original MFD in an attempt to identify & fix any issues, will be fixing the screen inside the cluster shortly, will keep the thread updated.

As for the sources, I'm planning on releasing the Arduino code, schematics & the Nextion HMI file as an open source project via Github. I'm currently in the process of polishing the edges to make it presentable to a wider audience.

Thanks to Sarang Purohit for sharing this information with other enthusiasts.

Skoda has issued a recall for 663 units of the Laura produced between 2009 and 2010. The cars will receive a software update for the ABS/ESC Control Unit under the said recall.

Skoda dealers will contact the owners of the affected cars for booking service appointments. The company claims that the update will take approximately 1 hour, and will be done free of cost. Owners can check if their cars are affected or not by entering their Vehicle Identification Number (a 17-character digit alpha-numeric number) on Skoda’s official website.

In 2005, Skoda introduced the second-generation Octavia as the Laura in India. It was sold alongside the first-generation Octavia in its initial years. The Laura received a facelift in 2009 and in 2013, the company decided to bring back the Octavia badge and discontinue the Laura from the Indian market.

Skoda India has taken the Laura sedan off its website, suggesting that the car has been dropped from its line-up. The move comes just months after the launch of the all-new Octavia.

Launched in 2005, the Laura, which was known as the Octavia Mk2 in international markets, sold alongside the Octavia Mk1 in India for a while. In 2009, Skoda gave the Laura a facelift to keep it looking fresh.

The car was sold with a choice of two engines, a 1.8-litre, turbocharged petrol and a 2.0-litre turbocharged, diesel. The petrol unit, which produced 160 bhp and 250 Nm of torque, was available with a 7-speed DSG automatic or a 6-speed manual gearbox. The diesel engine was available in two configurations – 110 bhp and 250 Nm, with a 5-speed manual gearbox and 140 bhp and 320 Nm, with a 6-speed DSG automatic transmission.

Over the years the Laura has been seen in various trim levels, out of which, the vRS will be remembered fondly by enthusiasts. Throughout its tenure, the Laura sold in good numbers.

BHPian Mtnrajdeep scooped this video of Skoda's new 2013 Octavia in Bangalore.

The new Octavia is due to go on sale later this year, and is an extremely important model for Skoda India. 

The new Octavia is based on parent company VW's MQB platform. Other cars on this platform are the 2013 Audi A3, Seat Leon and VW Golf.

The new Octavia has better interior space and also an edgier exterior design. On offer will be a base petrol with the 1.4L TSI engine, and the higher powered 1.8L TSI (shared with the Skoda Superb). The 2.0L diesel might come in two states of tune. 

The original Octavia launched in 2000 was a game changer and catapulted Skoda from an unknown brand in India to its premium position today. In the recent past however, the company's sales have declined at an alarming rate. Compared to March 2012 volumes of 4,822 cars, Skoda sold a mere 2,079 cars in March 2013.

Vinj14, an eagle-eyed BHPian, breaks the news on Skoda launching the 7-Speed DSG Automatic with the Laura 1.8L TSI petrol. 

Skoda has always given the Laura petrol step-motherly treatment. First, it was made available in basic trim levels only. Then, while the Superb with the same motor offered a DSG option, the Laura TSI was sold with a manual transmission (MT) only, despite the fact that premium car owners prefer automatics. The pricing isn't impressive though. The Laura 1.8 DSG will find few takers as the diesel sibling costs a mere Rs. 50,000 more. Skoda expects the petrol DSG's sales to be lukewarm at best, and is going to make it available in limited numbers. 

That this 1.8L TSI motor is the segment best is a well accepted fact. It has superb torque on tap, is the most powerful from the segment and is reasonably efficient too. The Laura 1.8 DSG receives some additional features, the most notable being a touchscreen head-unit with bluetooth, steering-mounted audio controls, electrically adjustable driver's seat, 16" alloys (from the Laura vRS) and fatter 205 mm tyres. While the Laura DSG is impressively equipped, the Laura MT doesn't benefit from the newly added features. 

Potential owners should be warned that this 7-speed DSG is known to be troublesome; gearbox failures are commonplace and have left many owners stranded by the road. 

The all-new 3rd generation Octavia / Laura has been launched internationally and its India entry is around the corner.