Last month I nearly shed a tear as I said goodbye to my trusty Skoda Karoq. It was pretty much the perfect daily companion as it was practical and used its space in a ‘Simply Clever’ way (pardon the pun), while also having superb (last pun, promise) comfort and refinement levels. Its replacement is its smaller brother, the Kamiq.
I have gone for the top-of-the-line Monte Carlo model, and it features bucket sport seats, fake carbon fibre inlays on the door cards and seat bolsters, diamond-cut alloy wheels and a full-length glass panoramic roof. There was a pang of disappointment as I clambered aboard for the first time to find no leather interior, no heated seats or steering wheel, and no magnified ice scraper. But, if we gloss over those little first-world issues, the last month has proved that the cheaper Kamiq can still impress me in many areas.
First of all, while it may not feature as many clever design features as the Karoq, it still comes with a parking ticket holder on the windscreen, a phone holder located on the back of the driver’s seat and an umbrella in the driver’s door. My Karoq was fitted with a very smooth 1.5-litre TSI four-cylinder petrol engine, but this Kamiq has a smaller 1.
0-litre TSI unit under the bonnet. Like the Karoq, though, it comes with a seven-speed DSG automatic gearbox. Out on the road the three-cylinder engine does sound a little thrummy, and the gearbox has the same annoying characteristics as before, such as being a little slow to r.