Skoda Desperately Tried to Make an Electric SUV Cool (And It Kinda Works)

We love Skoda, don't we folks? The century-old Czech automaker always has some interesting forbidden fruit that we can only admire from across the pond. This year, leveraging its history in motorsport, Skoda built a pretty badass rally car based on one of its otherwise unassuming electric SUVs. This is the Skoda Enyaq RS Race concept.

Designed and built by Skoda Motorsport, the race division took a normal Enyaq EV and made it lower, wider, and lighter. Using biocomposite body panels incorporating flax fibers, and lightweight polycarbonate windows, the Enyaq RS Race is 661 pounds lighter than the standard Enyaq SUV. That puts it somewhere around 4,300 pounds in total.

The concept sits 2.8 inches lower than the standard Enyaq, and is 2.8 inches wider at the front and 4.6 inches wider at the rear. It ditches the production dynamic chassis control suspension for a race-ready sports suspension with individual adjustments for the spring stiffness, compression, and rebound.

Visually, the Enyaq RS Race gets an aggressive aero kit with various vents and wings. It has a new lip spoiler and a larger grille opening for better cooling up front, a sizable spoiler in the rear for added downforce, and even a functioning ​​NACA duct that channels air into the interior. Even the custom 20-inch wheels were designed to improve aerodynamics.

Two electric motors and an 82.0-kilowatt-hour battery pack power the concept, giving it 335 horsepower. Thanks to its generous weight loss, the Enyaq RS Concept will hit 62 miles per hour in less than five seconds, but it has the same 112-mph top speed as its production counterpart.

Just like a real rally car, Skoda Motorsport actually stripped the Enyaq’s interior. It now has a roll cage, a handbrake lever, an emergency fire extinguisher switch, safety foam panels, and instead of the traditional rack-and-pinion steering, this concept has linear steering with adjustable steering weight—as well as a new race-ready steering wheel. Don’t worry, Skoda kept the 13.0-inch touchscreen.

Will you ever be able to buy one of these? Unlikely. But it’s an interesting exercise in what’s possible for Skoda Motorsport moving forward. Johannes Neft, a Skoda Auto Board Member for Technical Development, says that the company is "trialing [the biocomposite parts] in motorsport," and that they may use the material in "future implementation."

Either way, it’s awesome.