1st off a very big thank you to Hayes for bringing the car to the meet on 31 July 201

Here is an opportunity here for those of you who had a drive to post your thoughts, please do

My thoughts.

Interior.

Dark, nothing stands out about this to make it special, its functional, clearly laid out & the white dial colour display for the clocks is a nice change from all the blues, greens & pink or reds of other manufacturers.

Front Seats are comfortable & supportive, & should be no problem for anyone to find a comfortable driving position, specially with the reach & rake steering (most other cars dont give you both).

Rear seat legroom even in front of a 5ft 10 in driver, for a 6 ft person is reasonably comfortable and should be good for most people ( as verified by a 6 ft person sitting behind a driver), It is not a hard bench seat in the back & will seat 2 comfortably, a person sitting in the middle may find it a bit hard.

Exterior

As most of you have seen the pictures, the front is quite aggressive when compared directly to other models, the only noticeable difference from the side will be seen by the choice of alloys. Rear view is similar to the normal fabia, with just the exhaust.

Drive

Well my personal view.

The engine is really well put together with the supercharger & turbo, it gives a really good transfer of power to the road, without having to wait till 3K + revs before the power comes in, you do actually get some torque in the low rev range to give you the pull to get out of trouble.

The 7 speed dsg box, i still question, why ? as an experiment of dropping from 7 to 6 only gave a difference of 100 rpm. Having said that the dsg box is un believable, you cannot feel any gear changes, when left in drive. Tried switch to Flappy paddles, but didnt have enough time in the car to be able to make any real fair comments, hopefully one of the other guys who drove this can fill in the blans aroud using this & Sport mode.

Ride is very smooth over normal road bumps these being soaked up really well

Overall

This is a well capable all round little car that can very easily be used day to day driving, round town, shopping etc with the instant access to the ability to get out of trouble.

It can also be used to have a bit of fun with, prob a bit of a hoot on track days given its not an out & out track car.

An original vRS its not, so any test drive should be taken with this in mind.

Only reservations-

Long term reliability of the engine.

Fuel economy of the car - Those quoted by manufacturer & what we get in the real world.

Look forward to any other reviews by others who drove the car on 31st July

Another thanks to Hayes for taking the time out to show us the new vRS!

I agree, with you about the gear changes Steve. I found them very very smooth and it was often difficult to know what gear you were in if you weren't paying attention. I only briefly tried the Sport mode, which held the revs a lot longer than in normal Drive. Having very limited experience with DSG or AMG auto boxes, I think it would take me a while to get used it. Other than that, a very smooth drive with ample power.

I'm still not totally conviced with the looks, but looking at the brochure, the Estate looks a bit better in my opinion.

Here are a vew pics I took earlier on on the evening.

I know a lot of people say dont compare it to the Mk1 but alls i will say is............ Drives like a Mk 1 with a 1.4 TSI + DGS gear box.

I was soo scared they would loose the essance of the Fabia Vrs..... they didnt, if anything that engine makes it MENTAL!

That 1.4TSi engine is hilarious! If you hold it in gear at about 2,800rpm and nail the throttle you can detect a supercharger whine and you can hear the turbo spooling up.

Having owned a DSG car previously, I can safely say they have ploughed a lot of R&D into the technology to make it work properly now. The computer "knows" which gear is best, rather than guessing as it used to. The paddles really make the gearbox though. I switched to driving in manual and if you drive ahead of yourself as you should, you can really make the gearbox work. Drop a few cogs, feed the power in and the car just comes to life. There i no lag of any kind. Its like driving a petrol/diesel hybrid (whatever that might be like!). It made me chuckle a few times.

I couldnt really rate the interior as it was dark, however it felt like a Lupo.

Steering was positive and really well weighted. I used to hate EPS, however since Ford hit the EPS nail on the head with the Fiesta, other manufacturers seem to have picked up their game and made it work. The EPS in my old golf was just dangerous and gave no feedback at all.

Ride - Nice, could be firmer

Handling - Nice

Power - enough for now

Would I buy one? - Second hand, maybe. I wouldnt chop my current car in to get one though.

Looks - like its on stilts. Any attempt at improving the "looks" will make it look a bit rudeboi. Its a catch22. You either have a car which looks like a mobility scooter or one which looks like scooter the band.

It was hard to judge conclusivly as when I test drive a dealers car, I find myself respecting it probably a bit too much.

Hi Guys I have posted my observations on the VRS and the Guilietta i drove in the Autotest section if you want to check it out: great little car but mentioned the same thing as Steve in regard to the long term reliability of the drivetrain.

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/169643-14-turbos-back-to-back/

I wast he 6 foot passenger mentioned in Steves report. Very comfy and plenty of room for me if on a short to medium journey. I think I would be statrting to feel my legs go numb on a long journey, but thats down to an old motorcycle crash injury, not the car.

From the back, the car seemed to have plenty of poke, even with the 4 "light weights" ( ) in the vehicle. My only concern was that the rear suspension or shock absorbers seemed to be creaking a fair bit...... A new car "breaking in" perhaps??

Would I test one?? Deffinatley!! Mrs Stig wants to play with the demo car at the local stealers in the next few weeks :p I've allready planned out a nice test route through West Kent.............. I'll report back with our findings once we've done the test

The Ferbi will fly out of the show rooms once the word gets back from "weekend test pilots" as to how good it will be. Just my humble opioion of course.

The only competition I can see will come from the Fiat 500 Arbarth.................. An other contender on Mrs Stigs shopping list

And, where are the photos and video taken on the night Steve?? Can't seem to find them :no:

I wast he 6 foot passenger mentioned in Steves report. Very comfy and plenty of room for me if on a short to medium journey. I think I would be statrting to feel my legs go numb on a long journey, but thats down to an old motorcycle crash injury, not the car.

From the back, the car seemed to have plenty of poke, even with the 4 "light weights" ( ) in the vehicle. My only concern was that the rear suspension or shock absorbers seemed to be creaking a fair bit...... A new car "breaking in" perhaps??

Would I test one?? Deffinatley!! Mrs Stig wants to play with the demo car at the local stealers in the next few weeks :p I've allready planned out a nice test route through West Kent.............. I'll report back with our findings once we've done the test

The Ferbi will fly out of the show rooms once the word gets back from "weekend test pilots" as to how good it will be. Just my humble opioion of course.

The only competition I can see will come from the Fiat 500 Arbarth.................. An other contender on Mrs Stigs shopping list

And, where are the photos and video taken on the night Steve?? Can't seem to find them :no:

Ahh haa, found them!!

The only competition I can see will come from the Fiat 500 Arbarth.................. An other contender on Mrs Stigs shopping list

Having owned a 500, I will gladly point out the +ves & -ves of living with the car ( regardless of engine as that just moves it )

Having owned a 500, I will gladly point out the +ves & -ves of living with the car ( regardless of engine as that just moves it )

*ahem* DPF *ahem*

Having owned a 500, I will gladly point out the +ves & -ves of living with the car ( regardless of engine as that just moves it )

Don't worry. We test drove the Ferbi and the 500 pretty much back to back today. We love the Ferbi and were realy disapointed with the 500 :S

The Ferbi was everything we have come to expect from the vRS badge and more, powwwwwwwwwer, comfort, brilliant drive, space for us all and so on. We love the gear change, so smooth and refined, the supercharger whine, the turbo whistle, eveything

The 500 Arbarth was a nice little car, but thats all it is. Cramped, jerky suspension, the wheel kept hitting my legs on turning into corners under braking. The seats in the demo car were upgraded recaro style, apparently, were rather tight for my non recaro bum. Would have prefered leather. It seamed to give up accellerating in 5th over 80 mph Not very impressed with it in non sports mode, ther turbo display kept flashing to change up even under light exceleration, would become tiresome after about 5 minutes!!

So, thats the Fiat out of the running (sadly, we realy wanted to like this car) Next on the weekend testing list is the Fiesta Zetec S and a small Seat FR of some description.

Hello Guys

Glad to hear that you all liked the car, and, no real negatives were pointed out.

The sales of the car have really taken off. Although obviously i can only talk for Hayes Garage.

The car is to be taken to VAG event in Essex in the coming weeks. Im sure the DUB guys will like this car just as much.

Thank you once again.

Barry