Posted on: May 22, 2012 | 4,212 reads

Spied: Skoda Rapid at the Nurburgring

The new compact should be hitting showrooms sometime next year.

A lightly camouflaged Skoda Rapid has been snapped while doing a lap of the Nurburgring in Germany. The carmaker is clearly accelerating the vehicle's development, which it hopes to slot between the Fabia sub-compact and the Octavia so that the latter can become a proper mid-size sedan in its own right. The prototype was wearing some decals around the front and rear lights to throw people off the scent, and the same trick was tried with the shape of the rear door. The rest of the car was pretty much camo-free.

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Skoda plan to release the Rapide in 2013 so will use an older platform and not VW Group's latest MQB platform. They will, however, utilize their new-gen engines in order to provide decent levels of efficiency.