Paris 2016: Crisp Skoda Kodiaq clobbers confused Audi Q5

The running order as you walk across the floor of the Paris Motor Show goes Audi, VW, Seat, Skoda, as if to reinforce the pecking order within the VW Group. Or perhaps to maximise the clear space between the freshly unveiled Skoda Kodiaq and Audi Q5. The supposedly budget Czech brand has produced a chiselled and imposing new seven-seat SUV, with sufficient presence to give the Volvo XC90 a fright. The Q5, by contrast, is such a self-referential muddle of Audi cues that it risks disappearing up its own exhaust pipe.

That exhaust pipe, by the way, is fake. Chrome-rimmed slots at the lower edge of the Q5’s rear valance look like big-bore exhausts but aren’t – the real twin pipes curve away apologetically out of sight.

There’s no such fakery apparent on the Skoda. Where there is sleight of hand – for example in the alternating gloss and matt stripes that extend the pattern of the grille across the central slab of the nose-mounted radar – it’s done for a reasonable purpose. Disguise on the Skoda is preferable to dishonesty on the Audi.

It’s also hard to defend Audi’s jumble of wandering curves in the face of the Kodiaq’s linear certainty. Both cars boast a clamshell bonnet, for example, with a cutline that runs aft and becomes a crisp feature line running all the way to the rear. The meeting of a cut and a crease is never especially comfortable – suggestive of a stressed surface coming apart at the seams – but by adding a distinct downward droop the Q5 gains the additional unwelcome hint of melting.

Clearly the Q5’s wavy feature line is intended to echo the old, and handsome, A5, and in turn to acknowledge the blistered arches of Audi’s rallying past. But the Q5 fails to deliver that nod cleanly because its shoulder surface is fuller than its flanks – entirely the wrong way around. If a Renault Twingo can carry off a hint of boxed arches with more conviction than an Audi, something is clearly amiss.

Equally, something is seriously amiss when a budget brand can show a premium brand how to create a feeling of solid prestige. Perhaps the Skoda and Audi design teams need to trade places for a while.