Skoda Fabia

[MichaelH]

I've been looking to replace my 5 year old Punto for some time, and after a lot of hunting I've discovered a nice potential successor to my box of **** Fiat.....it's a 1.2 Skoda Fabia estate, brand new but sold as secondhand because the original owner won it at a golf course, of all places, and sold it on. It has 16 miles on the clock and is an extremely nice drive, seems well made, and is just the right size. All at £7999, it seems perfect.

But the thing that niggles me...it's a Skoda. My Grandad used to have one of those old rear-engine things and to this day he classes it as the worst car he's ever had. From someone who has had a Fiat Uno, a Maestro and a Hillman Imp that's really quite an accolade. I know they're essentially VWs these days, but I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who knows anything about them....are they well thought of in a long term sense or do I avoid and go for an older Focus or Toyota Yaris Verso? Help!!

[Carrie]

Who makes the engine on the 1.2? When I was looking around for a new car last year I was told that Skoda made the base 1.4 engine for the Fabia, but all the other engines in the range were made by VW.

I only took one out for a test drive in the end and that was the 1.9 TD which was very impressive, the only thing I really didn't like was how high the clutch seemed, I thought that would be abit uncomfortable for the amount of driving I do in busy traffic.

[Don K]

About 2 years ago, we did a short test drive in a Fabia (just because it had the engine we would like to have in our Octavia).
As far as I remember, it was a good car (but we only tested it for a couple of miles). But it was just a little bit too small for us.

The Octavia proved to be a perfect replacement for our Volvo V40. It had much more luxury, which is (imho) more than enough compensation for having only 4 air bags.
And we've had no problems at all with it.

As far as I know, Skodas have gained a lot of popularity during the last two years in Germany and the Netherlands.

At the moment, a Skoda should be just as reliable as an Audi, VW or Seat.
And even if the company were to fold (which I wouldn't expect, as they have a growing market share), getting service and/or parts can't be a problem, because they are using the same parts as Audi, VW and Seat.

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As far as I know, Skodas used to be very luxurious cars, before WWII.

After the war, the quality (eventually) dropped dramaticaly.

At some point, the company was taken over by VW; And after they finished reorganizing the factories in Czechya, the cars were just as good as the cars made by Seat, VW and Audi.
So now it just takes some time to get rid of the bad reputation they "gained" during the pre-VW years.

[Don K]

The Fabia that we had the test drive in, had a 1.9 TDi engine (red i), so it might have been the same engine as the engine in the car Carrie had her test drive in.

That engine was more than strong enough to drive our fully loaded Octavia through the mountains in Germany, so I can imagine it must have been quite impressive in the (lighter) Fabia. (I had to stop driving 180 kph, because I realized that a couple of smaller cars were trying to race me).

The 1.2 engine will probably have less power. But I assume that you already made some test drives, as you told us that the car is a nice drive.

[Don K]

I took a quick look at the (german) sites of Skoda and VW.
It looks to me as if the 1.2 (47 kW) engine in the Skoda Fabia is exactly the same as the 1.2 (47 kW) engine in the VW Polo.

[davemorganfan]

I would guess that a 1.2 engine in the estate body is a recipe for tailback creation. Otherwise the Fabia is a nice little motor, and if you can still get the 2-litre engine in it(ex-Golf GTI) I'll have one, please.

[Andrew Kitson]

I did a fair amount of work in Germany in the car industry, drawing techical Illustrations for most of the car manufacturers. When VW took over Skoda, I had the job of producing hundreds of small ink cartoons, back in 1993. These were published as a handbook and used to try to explain to the workforce at Skoda the VW working practices - regular maintenance of the plant , safety, etc, as many of them could not read and with the language problem anyway, these cartoons were thought to be a good solution for the training.
To save costs, the VW group adopted the standard platform principle. The new Beetle, Audi A3, Octavia and one of the SEATs have exactly the same floor, bulkhead etc. Therefore the modern Skoda is very well built and designed, as one would expect from the VW group.

[MichaelH]

thanks for the replies guys.

It is a 1.2 VW engine, and it seems perky enough on the road. It is a smaller engine than the one that was in the Punto, but it's not a very big car compared to something like a Focus estate, so fingers vrossed it'll be okay fully laden! The deed has been done, anyway, and the car will be avalible for collection on Tuesday plus £1000 trade in for the Punto. Can't wait to be honest!