Well this afternoon has been my first real opportunity to get to know my wife's new Fabia; our first MKII. So the following is my first impression of this car from a background of owning quite a number of Skoda's over the years starting way back with a Rapid 136.

The facelift version from our point of view has much improved the Fabia II both externally and internally albeit the interior tweaks are small they to us anyway give a more upmarket and updated feel to the cabin in particular the removal of the silver painted vent surrounds, door handles and the change to white on black displays. Fit and finish is overall very good only the large 'panel' gap between the central vent and climate control unit looks out of place (something I might ask the dealer about in the future).

Seating is so comfy, wife and I both described it as like being in your favourite arm chair, much better than any previous Skoda we have owned. Obviously what suits some might not suit others; there is a lack of lateral support and under thigh support but this appears to work for us. Not tried the rear chairs so cannot comment on this as yet.

The Fabia appears to be a very easy car to live with; decent size boot, straight forward to get in and out of and generally a good view out. A pillars are a bit on the chunky side but I've not found this to be a problem and it's a lot better to reverse than our previous 3 door Corsa. All controls fall easy to hand and the gear change is silk smooth. Do find though the cabin conditioning fan tends to run too high for my liking in Auto, on the Yeti you can put it into a low mode which is much better.

Ride wise it seems quite compliant, goes round corners OK for a tall car on a standard suspension set-up, although it doesn't quite iron out road imperfections as well as the Yeti. Grip levels appear good although there is noticeable tyre roar but I think a good part of this can be attributed to the factory fitted Conti Premium Contact 2 tyres as we had the same thing with these tyres on the Corsa (also from factory).

The engine though is the real star of this car; still very tight having covered less than 200 miles so far, which leads to gear changes I would not normally consider necessary but even so the potential of this motor is very evident. It's very diesel like in terms of low revving with 2000 to 2500 appearing to be the normal band of operation when your hustling it along, can even drop down to 1500 in fifth at lower speeds but you need to watch that as the turbo goes off song, need to be at about 1800 where it starts to come alive. Had a steep hill to climb on the way home this afternoon started in fourth but dropped to third and endeavoured to keep the revs down but you could tell it just wanted to fly. Also did a bit of overtaking and again had to keep a check on her as she just wanted to go (the vRS must be a right hooligan ) overall you hardly hear the motor running more often notice the tyres than the motor but when you do its a pleasant muted growl in the background. For an 85 bhp motor I reckon when it gets run in its going to be a right 'Peperami ' MPG is already pretty good for a cross country run on the Yorkshire Wolds, managed almost 47 indicated and that included the hill climb

My only real criticism is with the Skoda dashboard design and Q/C people, as like the Yeti it's got the exact same intermittent creaks and rattles up front makes me wonder if this is not a Skoda conspiracy against poor old TP

TP

Nice write up and i do agree with you, the engine may only have 85 horses but it does motor on. I love our little TSI which has 700 miles on, and hope to keep smiling for years to come.

Nice one TP, a great summary of the car

Plumber, that's brilliant information. Keep it coming mate!

Good information TP. Hope you get your squeaks and rattles sorted soon!!

Useful review TP. Glad you like the car.

IIRC someone posted some graphs on the Fabia forum which showed that in real world driving the tsi 85 (nominally replacing the previous 1.4) actually has better performance than the outgoing 1.6! This was due to more torque and the availability of power lower in the rev range.

hard luck with the squeaks: they may just settle down as the car beds in. Are they related to the fitting of the dashboard? Have you alerted your dealer to them? I hope they get sorted soon.