Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £16,325 to £27,305
Spacious, classy cabin, enormous boot, high levels of equipment, good to drive.
Not the easiest to park, PD diesels are unrefined, ride not quite as cosseting as hatch.
Huge Skoda packs a winning combination of space, quality and value for money.
'Sport Wagon', 'Sport Tourer' and 'Touring' are all tags hijacked by marketers to inject sex appeal into the humble estate. So when Czech firm Skoda unveiled its new big-booted version of the Superb hatch it threw sporting and lifestyle pretensions to the wind and called its big, honest estate, just that, an Estate.
Actually, 'big' is an understatement. The new estate is enormous, offering comfortably more passenger and boot space than all of its competition - including the all-important Volvo V70.
Indeed, Volvo should be quaking in its boots. For just £1,200(est) more than the hatch, the Skoda Estate verges on being seriously good value. Prices start at £17,500, which is almost £5,000 adrift of the cheapest V70. Better still, the Superb wagon's lines cures the hatches unresolved and downright ungainly rear styling.
Under the bonnet the full range of Superb engines carry over from the tiny 122bhp 1.4TSI to the muscular 256bhp 3.6 V6. The good news is the aged 138bhp 2.0-litre 'pumpe duse' diesel unit will be replaced in March by a more flexible, refined and efficient common rail offering. A similar fate awaits the entry level 1.9 diesel in October, which could bring emissions down to below 120g/km of CO2.
What the Estate does lacks is the self-levelling suspension loved by serious load luggers, but forgive this omission and the Superb could very well be the best big estate money can buy and a worthy replacement for a family bored by MPVs.
Prices will stretch from around £17,500 to an estimated £29,000 for the all-wheel drive V6.
