Top Nice Cars: Skoda

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SCOOP: Skoda Caught Trying out New Superb Scout

The Scout moniker is for Skoda what the Allroad nameplate is for Audi. In other words, it is used to describe the mildly tweaked "faux off-road" versions of Skoda's regular passenger models.

With the exception of the Yeti, which is a crossover anyway, the only other model in Skoda's current range (the Citigo won't launch before May) that does not include a Scout version is the flagship Superb.

But that's about to change as the Czech manufacturer was spied out in the open testing a Scout version of the roomy Superb Combi.

The Czech auto brand that could has built its 14 millionth vehicle some 107 years after Vaclav Laurin and Vaclav Klement, the founders of Skoda, began producing their first cars in 1905.

The milestone vehicle is a special edition ‘Laurin & Klement’ Superb that is designated for delivery to a German customer.

“This celebratory car is an impressive expression of our growth strategy,” said Skoda chairman Winfried Vahland. “We are expanding at a high speed. Almost two thirds of the 14 million cars built by the company were produced and sold in the past 20 years, four million of which were produced in the past 5 years alone.”

At an event held today at its headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, Volkswagen revealed its new "Modularer Querbaukasten" or MQB platform that will form the base for the upcoming seventh generation Golf as well as a large number of other mainstream models.

The MQB is by far the most important platform architecture in the group, as it will be used in the next generations of the Volkswagen Polo, Beetle, Golf, Scirocco, Jetta, Tiguan, Touran, Sharan, Passat, and CC, as well as the soon-to-be revealed Audi A3, and all the other derivatives from Seat and Skoda.

A key feature of the platform is its flexibility in terms of wheelbase length, track width, wheel size and seating positions. Other dimensions such as the distance between the pedals to the wheel center are always the same and provide a unified front-end system.

Like clockwork, the Volkswagen Group is releasing pictures and details of its expanded range of city cars based on the Up!.

Following on from last week's introduction of the Volkswagen brand's five-door Up!, it's Skoda's turn to show a more practical but same-sized version of the Citigo.

The five-door Citigo will make its grand premiere at the 2012 Geneva Salon in March before it goes on sale across Europe together with the three-door version of the Skoda-branded car from mid-May.

As one of the largest and most important auto shows in the Middle East, the annual Qatar Motor Show's primary goal is to serve as the launching pad for the local debut of the industry's latest models before they arrive in showrooms.

That said, with the exception of some non-significant debuts such as the one-off, black and yellow themed Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport that we told about on Monday, the show doesn't host any noteworthy world premieres.

Nevertheless, for those of you that want to get a sample of the 2012 edition of the Qatar Motor Show that will be open to the general public from January 25 to 28, we've prepared a high-resolution gallery that you can check out for yourself right after the break.

After a three-year hiatus, the most famous rally in the world, the Rallye Monte Carlo, has returned to the WRC calendar. As it was the 80th event, the Automobile Club de Monaco, which organized the race, decided to design a route that combined memories of past years with demanding stages.

The 2012 Monte Carlo rally started on January 17 with a ceremony north of Monaco, in the city of Valence. The real action, which consisted of 430 kilometers (267 miles) spread over 18 special stages, begun three days later, on January 20.