After eight years in the market, it's time for Skoda's successful family notchback to slowly give its place to a brand new Octavia that will make its world premiere sometime next year, either at the Geneva Salon in March or at the Frankfurt Motor Show later on in September.
For the first time, our scoop shooters seized a prototype of the production Octavia Mk3 as the Czech firm's engineers were performing high-speed tests at the Nürburgring track in Germany.
Evidently, it's not east to tell what's going on under the psychedelic-themed camouflage, but we can see that the third generation of Skoda's bread and butter model has a more athletic shape than the current Octavia with a lower front end and a sleeker roofline.
We cannot be completely sure from these images, but it is likely that the new model will keep the Octavia's traditional notchback styling that disguises a hatch tailgate.
