► Living with a Skoda Enyaq vRS Coupe
► We’re invited to meet the Tour de France
► Read month 3
I’ve never accepted an invitation from a car manufacturer faster. Skoda has supplied support cars to the Tour de France for 21 years now: around half as long as I’ve been obsessed with the race. I’m a cyclist, and I run a Skoda Enyaq Coupe vRS long-term test car. Would I like to drive my car down through France to meet the Tour, Skoda asked, ride my bike with a former winner, then ride in a support car in the midst of the race?
Insta-yes. Indulge me: I appreciate that this sort of opportunity is only available to lucky hacks. The vague journalistic justification is that Skoda’s long-standing and vast (250 car!) deal with the Tour and other bike races has been a major factor in the long-term rehabilitation of its image. And I’ve always wondered how hard those chase cars and their drivers have to work over 2000 miles and three weeks of racing, especially when the riders are plummeting down hairpinned Alpine passes at 60mph.
First job was to fit a factory roofrack to the Enyaq: done in minutes, as previously reported. Next was to find something appropriate to ride with Andy Schleck, who won the Tour in 2010 and is now a Skoda ambassador. As Lance Armstrong said in the title of his autobiography, ‘it’s not about the bike’ (for him it was plainly about the drugs) but after a period of slipped-disc-induced inactivity I’d need all the help I could get. I also wanted something that looked good atop my Enyaq, and maybe matched its environmental credentials.
So I called Enigma. Local to me in Sussex, they make gorgeous bikes by hand from recycled titanium in a solar-powered workshop. They’re in fierce demand, so I didn’t think they’d have a spare one lying around. But founder and ex-racer Jim Walker inexplicably trusted me with £6500-worth of his Etape fast-road model, its lustrous bare-metal finish and deep-section black wheels the perfect monochrome match for the Enyaq.
I made very bloody certain the bike was secured to the roof and set off. Unsurprisingly, the Enyaq smashed the 500-mile drive down to Clermont-Ferrand, with its great seats, fine ride and masses of power. Even at ‘elevated’ motorway speeds and leaving a very comfortable cushion we covered well over 200 miles between stops. Combine that with the often empty banks of ultra-rapid chargers at every French aire and the logistics were as stress-free as the machinery. It’s like driving in the electric utopia we’ve long been promised, but which Britain’s public charging network utterly fails to deliver.
Sadly France’s weather failed to deliver summer the next morning, and despite a dozen of us having risen early for a ride starting at 6am, Schleck took one look at the river running down the street outside the hotel and called it off. You can do that when you’ve won the greatest prize in cycling. Had the trip down been in vain? At least Schleck and fellow former pros, Skoda Tour guides and Belgian spelling nightmares Staf Scheirlinckx and Franky van Haesebroucke had a proper geek-out over the exotic English Enigma, instead of marvelling over how slowly I’d have ridden it. Schleck also wanted to sit in the Enyaq – he’s had three, but not the new vRS yet. At least I beat him to that.
Back in more flattering clothing, we got into the Skoda chase cars to follow that day’s stage, which ran for 131 miles through the mountains of the Massif Central. Staf was driving. Of course I asked if I could, and was laughed at. It doesn’t matter if you can go sub-eight at the Nordschliefe: only ex-pro riders or very experienced ⊲ team staff get to drive the chase cars, because if you don’t understand the grammar of a bike race and how and when the riders are likely to move you’re liable to take one out.
It smells like the Nordschliefe, though: all hot tyres and brakes on the descents, the Skodas squealing through hairpins in a way the mics don’t capture on TV.
But once you’ve relaxed about keeping your lunch down you can marvel at the weirdness of finding yourself in the middle of one the world’s great sporting events. Staf knows the riders, drives alongside them, and we can talk to them and hand them cans of Coke.
It’s like driving your car onto the Mulsanne straight when the Le Mans 24 hours is on. Sure, not every fan can ride in a support car, but cycling has always been an egalitarian, accessible sport, and it’s at least as much fun and entirely free to stand at the side of the road on one of the great climbs amidst the platoons of Dutchmen dressed in orange mankinis and the smell of merguez sausages cooking and the sounds of the cowbells which urge the riders on, and see your heroes pass within inches of you with no screen or barrier between.
And the nice thing is that for all the crowds and adulation and salary, most of those heroes still just love riding their bikes. The next morning, in one of the prettiest dawns I’ve ever seen, I put the Enigma on top of the Skoda and drove over the mountains to Andy’s new hotel for the ride I’d been denied the morning before.
It was short – maybe 20 miles – but one of the sweetest rides I’ve had. Despite the fact that I spent three weeks watching the guy now pedalling next to me win the greatest race in the world, it felt entirely like a ride with mates back home. Little of consequence was said.
Franky, a little bigger than when he was a pro, still pulled like a loco on the climbs. Andy kindly rode at my pace and dicked around on his bike like a teenager, practising no-handed trackstands. The Enigma felt lithe and light beneath me, and way better a bike than my legs deserved.
Thanks, Skoda, but the greatest moment of this road trip didn’t involve a single car.
Logbook: Skoda Enyaq Coupe iV vRS
Price £54,155 (£58,800 as tested)
Performance 77kWh battery, twin e-motors, 5.5sec 0-62mph, 111mph
Efficiency 3.9 miles per kWh claimed, 3.5 tested, 0g/km CO2
Range 336 miles (claimed), 265 miles (tested)
Energy cost 8.7p per mile
Miles this month 1404
Total miles 6872