Ghostdog

Are they any good? Worth the 12k price tag?

ianc

yes, yes, www.briskoda.net

rs125

is that 12k new... ive been looking at these recently and the best price ive found is £13990...

mgg

£11990 on the road, from dealer, picked price list up on sat.

Worth the money!

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Anyone see top gear last night then? It whooped the mini cooper on the track

brickboy

Had a 1-hour test drive in one the other weekend, nice inside, all the toys. Very accessible performance, my daily driver is a Passat TDi 130 sport and the Fabia felt a lot quicker.

Didn't rate the handling, too much "safe" understeer but it is predictable and reasonably responsive.

Overall a very good package IMHO.

Flat 4x4

Put it this way - If it was a Polo (which it is,really) it would be £15k+

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

My fiancee and I took one for a test drive.

After about 20 minutes of tooling around in it (fast, slow, over bumps, dual carriageway, etc, etc) my fiancee tells me she was feeling car sick!

I call her a wuss and suggested that she drive for a bit.

After about 10 minutes I was feeling sick!

We drove back to the dealer and said we loved the looks, the interior, the features and the power of the engine, but it made us feel sick.

Expecting to be laughed out of the showroom, he tells us his wife is the same in certain Skodas! Normally Octavia estates with climate control, but none of the others!

Chins mentioned that the suspension was a bit boaty, and I think that coupled with the dash cleaner they used, it made it an terrible experience!

Strangely, I've been in the 130TDI's before such as the Passat, Octavia estate, Golf, Leon and have never experienced the same sensation!

We test drove a Seat Ibiza the same day with the same 130bhp TDI engine, and we were both fine! Odd...!

Olly

Local dealer is currently offering them at £10900 on the road.

Star Performance do a power upgrade to a claimed 175bhp with 280lb/ft torque for £590.

Sounds an absolute bargain to me. Especially after throwing in the little matter of a possible 50mpg.

Seem to be actually pretty good residually as well.

Imagine the all of the boy racers and poncy Cooper "S" owners you could harrass with one.

Petem95

Skoda sounds like a good bet, but then if you bought a Cooper for the same money (or there abouts) its surely going to retain MUCH more value in a few years time. Even taking the extra MPG of the Skoda into account, I think you'd have to be doing a lot of mileage for it to work out cheaper overall.

New Mini residuals are some of the best of any car, and are sure to hold up for some years.

tallsteve

Mini Cooper S is about £14.5K without any options isn't it? That's 4K more expensive (I assume the VRS was racing a Cooper S - didn't see it, damn!)..

Good point about re-sale though, wonder if this will fall when the revised Minis start making an appearance in 2005?

A couple of VRS's have blatted past me on dual carriageways and Mways - looked quite peppy (true, I was doodling along at 70ish in my Legacy Turbo), but wish I could get 50 mpg!

Flat 4x4

I really rate these cars. Having owned a Legacy Turbo and having had the chance to compare my Octavia 4x4 (220) on track with 180bhp+ Fabia's, I can confirm that there really is not much in it. (300lb/ft typical)

Yes, the suspension can be firmed up and the brakes improved, but that's true of most cars to be honest.

The Polo 5 door with metallic and the same floorpan/engine/gearbox/kit is £3000 more expensive. Barmy

Raks

think you'll find different !!! ..........

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/defa...p?storyId=8776

16vmarc

If i was in the market for (or could even afford ) a second car, this is without a doubt the car i would buy.

Mortywrx

Ive got one of these and they are much fun especially with lowered and uprated suspension,chipped and with a s/s exhuast plus larger turbo and airfilter they can obtain over 200+bhp and 400lb ft torque

check out www.briskoda.co.uk

darren

mynickers

Too fools throwing a couple cars around an airstrip, one a lanky clueless nobber with a reputation for being a rank driver, hardly makes it a fair test, in fact it does the Skoda no favours to have him win a race against anything!

Tis a very good car though, for the money it's bang on, although you can get the Clio 182 with cup sus, pack for the same as I am sure you're awre also a very good car for same money. Not so sure that Skoda and Cooper were a fair test, 182 would very likely woop a cooper, but the cooper is the warm hatch! And some reckon the Seat Cupra TDI has the edge, probably the same thing underneith, but I think the Seat looks better personally.

But you can get a Skoda Octavia vRS 1.8 Turbo Hatch £13792, same engine as the Seat Leon Cupra R (and Audi TT) which is a hell of a lot of car for the money, considering the Leon is £16k odd.. That would give a Cooper 'S' a run for it's money not just a cooper

One thing I am really interseted to know though, is are these sporty oil burners cheaper to run than a Petrol. The obvious answer is yes, but given they're both being driven in a similar manor, and have been tuned for performance, do you still see large savings all that rubbish on paper means nothing to me. As they're based on 'normal' driving, and everyone here knows, they don't put combined figures for people that rake the **** out of cars.

Mossman

We've had one since February and it is superb - Xenons, cruise, AC, 6 disc changer, 6 speed box and 53.3 mpg average over 13,000 miles! The overtaking is really good - 3rd and 4th gear are a lot of fun, believe me!
Build quality is spot on - we had a leak from the rear wiper washer under the car, but that is it.

Seriously, a great car - AMD remap on the way I hope!!

Mossman

PS Would agree with the slight understeer - it does wallow a little at speed and could do with some firmer springs.

MooseRacer

Proves the point - equivalent 5door Polo is 14750.

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

I thought that when I read this post yesterday, but I watched it last night and they were comparing it with a bog standard Cooper (without a supercharger)

On paper fairly similar in performance, the Fabia seemed to have more understeer, worse brakes and only made up for it by having loads of mid-range torque.

tallsteve

Ahhh, that make a bit more sense - Couldn't quite see how a VRS (standard) could beat a Cooper S... Makes the prices a bit more level too!

Mortywrx

the nobber driving the cars was not using all the power from the skoda keep it in the lower revs say between 1500-3500 and you see alot of pulling power. also they probably did the test with the ASR on which is quite bad in corners as it cuts all power if your thrapping it
Im not one for driving fast all the time but I wanted to test this car to see if the consumption was worse when thrashed? surprised to see it returning 37.8mpg after a thrash down to Liverpool, also motorway driving was close to 68mpg on the same journey when I did calm down.

Darren

Cupramax

Sorry to be a pedant but no it isn't. The Tavia is the 180hp Ko3 turbo and the Leon Cupra R is 210/225hp with a Ko4, the block maybe the same but not an awful lot else is. Granted they are great VFM.

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

So do you mean the following cars are bascially the same engine and turbo with different mappings? Is that right?

VW Golf 1.8T
Seat Leon Curpra
Seat Ibiza 1.8T
Audi TT (180bhp)
Skoda Octavia vRS
Audi A3 1.8T
Audi A4 1.8T
VW Passat 1.8T
(etc, etc)

And I know the following are basically the same and the extra 15bhp is gained through ECU mapping rather than engine changes

Audi TT (210/225bhp)
Audi S3 (210/225bhp)
Seat Leon Cupra R (210/225bhp)

Cupramax

Yes, thats about it, there are a few turbo variations on the 150/180hp engines but they are all basically the same motor.

The 210/225 models differ from the above list in turbo and twin intercoolers plus lower compression ratio but apart from that no a lot else.

TT has never had the 210 engine AFAIK

hawki

There are also a number of different head design between the 1.8t's which effect their tuning potential
Large port head, small port head, small port head with VVT

The earliest AGU engine code with the big port head has the best potential if you going the big turbo route - the lastest 1.8t with small port and vvt plus the top k03 has the best potential if your just getting a remap on the 180/150 versions

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

That explains it all!! Live and learn!

Hmmm..... still waiting for the release of the RS3, so my mate can sell me his Audi S3 (225bhp) at the dealer trade in price!!

brickboy

On fuel, yes. My Passat has the same motor as the Fabia, but shorter gearing 'cos of the extra weight of the Passat.

On a typical 300-mile motorway and A-road round trip, point-to-point average of 65mph, I get a gen-yoo-wine 52mpg.

If I rag it (cruising at 95+mph) it still gives 48mpg.

kob999

They seem a pretty good car and I think what the piece showed was that you can get some pretty reasonable performance without loosing mpg. Trade in value would certainly be higher for the mini but if you keep your cars for a longer period than that difference would be lessened.

ChrisB

Ragging my Ibiza TDi (PD130) around Wales on our SN Camping Trip last year, I got 38mpg to the gallon

Otherwise, £35 of derv gets me about 500 miles of mixed M-way, A-road, town etc driving.

Dark Blue Mark

http://www.auto-amd.com/fabiars.asp

AMD do some good bits for them, but take a look a the torque curve there's barely 2k rpm to play with!

MB