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By Jonathan Crouch

Skoda addresses new EV territory with this sleek Enyaq Coupe. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 57

Emotive, sporty, elegant. Words that were foreign to the Skoda brand a couple of decades ago but are becoming increasingly apt as the company continues to push itself up-market. This is the marque's smartest and most sophisticated car yet, the Enyaq Coupe. A more dynamic take on this marque's first modern era electric vehicle, the Enyaq SUV.

Backgroundword count: 134

An aspirational Skoda? Really? Absolutely. That's what we have here in the form of the brand's Enyaq Coupe, an EV with attitude. On the face of things, this is just a more sporty looking version of the Enyaq hatch, delivered because the brand programme required it. We've already seen the same thing with the Volkswagen ID.4, which gained a coupe cousin with the ID.5. And the Audi Q4 e-tron, which can be had in alternative Sportback form. The Enyaq iV Coupe though, is rather more significant for its maker than that. It's the most expensive Skoda ever made, in top vRS form the fastest and, perhaps most significantly, to most eyes it's the most elegant car ever to wear the Czech maker's badge. The company claims it 'perfectly combines emotion with efficiency'. We'll see.

Driving Experienceword count: 270

You can of course expect the drive experience to be indistinguishable from that of the normal Enyaq SUV. Unlike that standard hatch, you only get one battery option with this Coupe body style - predictably the larger 77kWh one, which features on the base '85' version. That conventional model pairs this to a 286PS electric motor on the rear axle and claims a driving range of 351 miles. The alternative twin-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain features in the '85x' version (also with 286PS): and in the 'vRS' flagship variant (which was the first ever all-electric vRS), which has 340PS and 460Nm of torque, along with 336 miles of range. The vRS takes only 5.5 seconds to sprint to 62mph, on the way to a limited top speed of 112mph. Most Enyaq Coupes will be sold in more affordable rear-driven form. In suburbia having the powertrain - the electric motor and its associated single-speed auto gearbox - mounted on the back axle works better, primarily because this frees up the front wheels for steering duties. Which is why the turning circle is a London taxi-like 10.2-metres - better even than the brand's very first EV, the tiny Citigo e iV city car. As a result, this SUV Coupe is superbly manoeuvrable for its size, jinking through traffic hold-ups and darting into spaces. As with other electric vehicles, this one's town travel is characterised by its need to constantly emit a strange 'e-sound', intended to warn pedestrians of its impending approach. You wonder though, why it's necessary for this feature to sound so other-worldly; other brands use film composers to create more pleasant melodies.

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