Skoda has finally brought back a potentially exciting car into the country with the launch of its famous RS badge on the Laura. The Laura RS was launched last week in the capital to showcase the Czech company’s devotion to sports car fans in India. However, the specs are rather plain. You see, in Europe the Laura RS comes in many variants and with significantly high performance figures, which actually does provide the driver with a great deal of excitement. However, we in India will be getting the more tamed 1.8 TSI petrol engine, which is already available on the current Skoda Laura. There are no engine tweaks, just a sportier transmission and some hyped up sports design elements like 16 inch alloys and LED’s. To be quite honest this is actually disappointing news because Skoda claims that the RS badge is reserved strictly for its fastest and most powerful cars. The car is priced at only Rs 15.49 lakhs and will thus grab sales but there is nothing sporty about this 160bhp Laura with front-wheel drive and a 6-speed manual gearbox. Even though the interiors get race inspired steel pedals and a refreshed race set-up, all this says is that the car looks sporty. If Skoda really wants to bring something exciting, it should have thought about bringing in better and more powerful engines.
