Convertible crossovers are hardly what you’d call
“common” by any stretch of the imagination. Nissan did one. So has Land Rover.
Now Skoda is trying its hand at the same.
The Skoda Karoq cabriolet study is being undertaken
by a team of 20 students at the company’s vocational school in the Czech
Republic. The interns are all 17 or 18 years old, and are training in seven
different vocations. But they’re all working on the same project together.
And not for the first time, either. While the makeup
of the team has changed over the years, this is the fifth such project being
undertaken by Skoda’s teenage interns. The first of them was a Citigo roadster
that debuted in 2014. The following year, they did a Fabia pickup. Then a Rapid
Spaceback coupe. And last year they did an electric Citigo buggy.
This latest project is based on the company’s
compact crossover, and will be the first in the series based on an SUV. The
Karoq replaces the previous Yeti, and slots in underneath the larger Kodiaq.
It’s based on the same MQB platform that underpins the Seat Ateca – among so
many others made by the various brands under the Volkswagen Group umbrella.
So far all we have to go on are these design
sketches. But the finished product will be unveiled in June – presumably at the
GTI Treffen at Lake Wörthersee in Austria, where the others have been. We
wouldn’t hold our breath, though, for a production version to follow in the
path of the Murano and Range Rover Evoque.
