Our "own" car reviews

Rocking that D sticker like it's 1996 :D
 
Rocking that D sticker like it's 1996 :D

Yeah, Europcar slaps that onto all their cars in case you take it to a country that doesn't recognize the EU country plate.



:wave: RIP, bugs.



Yeah, I should have been less lazy and walked closer... but if you squint you can see over 9000 dead bugs splattered to death.
 
So, a bigass Skoda for 2 days. How does it measure up? (pun intended). Excuse the potato quality pictures, but my phone struggles in low light conditions and I couldn't be arsed to take "real" pictures

We know it's big. We know it's ridiculous value for money (this nearly fully equipped one adds up to a smidge over 24k euromonies, which means you could have this or a properly specced Golf 2.0 TDI)

Exterior


Longcar is long. It's proper huge this. Here's a comparison with my car taken at the exact same spot...



I guess you could put 2,5 C1s in there. Thankfully though, it's all well proportioned and not that hard to see out of either. Rear parking sensors do help (as the ass of the car is almost in another time zone), and I could have used a front sensor aswell as the nose is quite pointy.
Overall the car is a tad too wide for use on the narrow roads here, but this is only an issue in town.

Engine/gearbox.

As said, this was the poor man's 1.6 TDI we know from pretty much every VW product (is there any car that does not offer this engine? narf?). It's tuned to a gently 105hp in this trim, which is adequate. It's no rocketship, and it hates low revs (anything under 1500 rpms and it's just dead in the water), but it does accelerate cleanly and smoothly all the way to the 5k redline with no annoying gaps.
Acceleration above 100kph is a bit trickier, as you can't really use 5th (=cruising only). As I'm used to shifting a ton from my C1 this was not so hard for me to adapt to.

The shifter is nice, but nothing special. Nice crisp shifts, if a tiny bit long. And also the gearknob is huge. Needs more DSG.
Most astonishingly I could not get it to use more than 6l of diesel over a stretch of 200 kms. This had a bit of everything : stop/start traffic, city driving, stretches of highway and everything in between. Flogged it when possible so I did not expect this at all!
This gave me a range well over 1000 kms on one tank of fuel! This car being as comfortable as it is, I could do that without getting tired or bored.

Handling

It actually handles! Sure it's huge and not the lightest thing to throw around, but the steering wheel was nice and precise, and you could really throw it at corners if you wanted to. Damping was a bit on the soft side, which is exactly what you would want in a car like this.


Interior

More size everywhere!


Legroom is redonkulous back there... the only car I've ever been in where the rear seats have MORE space than the front seats!
I like the little clock display in the centre, which is there for no reason at all.

Seats were electric and adjustable in 84 different ways, as was the steering wheel, meaning the perfect driving position was easily found.
Also heated seats as standard, which is a nice touch. Setting 3 = volcano though, dunno why anyone would use that.


Smiley face steering wheel!

Overall an excellent quality interior, and I would have guessed Audi A6 had I been blindfolded.


Satnav is touchscreen but also features big buttons with LETTERS on them (excuse the blurriness).
System itself was excellent, it even read out the street names/city names in a weird computery voice which made me giggle.
Connectivity wise it was a bit oldschool (was an early 2012 model) because it only had a 3,5" plug and an SD card (I'm more of a USB man myself). Not to worry though, because it also had BT streaming which actually worked fine. Only downside of the lacking USB plug was that I could not charge my phone (first world problems...)

Sound system was also tested to proper deaf volume levels with hardly any distortion. Was also properly customisable (treble, bass, med, aswell as front rear / side to side adjustments)


Inoffensive rims but still pretty in a classic sort of way. You can opt for bigger sportier looking wheels but I wouldn't bother really.


It had a lot of nice things I've never seen anywere else, like dual controls for the mirrors (left mirror adjust both sides, right one just corrects the right one a bit), foglights that came on with the indicators, illuminating the corner you're taking, little lights in the mirrors pointing down so you don't step in a puddle... a whole bunch of just clever things, shows me that the car was properly thought through.
I dunno what the weird chrome thingy at the headlamps is though?

Lamp cleaner thingy? On a non-xenon light? I also love the little "superb" detail in the lights.


Boot size is properly ridiculous. I tried to see how much stuff/junk that needed to be thrown out could fit in there, but I ran out of stuff to put in before it was really full.

Suffice to say I could lay flat on my back in the boot without any issue. With the rear seats up.
Contrary to what you might think it's not as big and cumbersome to drive, despite being massive.



Overall verdict 9/10. Can't really find a real flaw anywhere, and that's a first for me. Unless you're a total badge snob or you need a small car because parking sucks, this is pretty awesome for anyone really.

Only cons I could find (and boy did I search far and wide for these) : no USB drive possibility (which is now standard in the new models), and a slightly awkward fuel filler opening (the pistol didn't fit properly).
As for this individual car, I would have it with the 2.0TDI engine because more torque is good, and a DSG because it's even better for cruising.
Also, more brown because pretty.

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The mirror adjust thing has been on every VAG I've driven since a Mk4 Golf. Our old T3 Multivan didn't have it, but then its mirrors were adjusted by banging your fist against them...
As for USB, did you check the centre armrest's cubby hole and the glove box? Chances are you had an MMI-ish plug in there that takes a USB adapter.
As for the 1.6TDI, you can't have it in an up!/Mii/Citigo, Phaeton, Touareg, T5, Sharan/Alhambra, or in a Tiguan.
Concerning the volcano setting, think winter with thicker clothes.
 
took you 11 minutes narf... getting slower! :p
I thought the 1.6 was available in the Sharan/Tiguan? Or do they use detuned 2.0 TDIs then (110 hp instead of the standard 136/143hp)?

I did check every cubbyhole but no MMI to be found. There was a hard drive though, which seems pointless to me...

Never had any car with the electric mirror feature though. Our Picasso's were linked at one time meaning you could only adjust both at a time...which was caused by French bad wiring :lol:

And I don't drive with a thick coat on, as in ever. Especially if I had buttheaters in the car :p
This was really bone meltingly hot though, had to switch if off after 30 seconds or so
 
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:nod: In the Octavia I usually turn them to 3 until I feel the first bit of heat like 10 seconds after unparking :lol: then down to 1 to keep on toastin'. The Eos ones are either weaker or are blocked too much by the leather :dunno:

The HDD is standard with he RNS510, primary function is to store navigation maps and later updates. Storing music on it off an SD card works, but harks back to when SD cards were expensive.


Yeah, both the Tiguan and Sharan use low-tune 2.0TDIs. More torque and low-down power than the 1.6TDIs.
 
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bigass Skoda
Shiny thing is headlight washer, which all cars should have (but only Xenons require them by law). Only three buttheater settings? VW group usually likes at least 6... And you can't have too much buttheat :p
Curve lights are greatest invention!
 
Audi has 6 most of the time :dunno:
 
From my own experiences I'm pretty sure they go to six. But as you see they at least go to five.
View attachment 14619View attachment 14620


Exactly

Odd. The Fabia has two on-settings, but that's cheaping out.
The Octavia, Eos, and Caddy have three. The Golf I had recently had three. All Passats I've rented had three. (all the same button: note the three LEDs.)
 
Yeah every modern VAG car Ive driven has three settings aswell, which are 1) hardly noticable, 2) fairly hot and 3) bonemeltingly ridiculous.

Same unit on a Golf VII, Sportvan, Passat, even a Polo. The Superb was identical but with green leds instead of red...
 
That's the default partsbin Climatronic that's used in many cars. I think the Passat (and up, including audis then) got different ones but everything below that has that panel. I have it too. They just give you different font/backlight depending on what make your car is, and different buttons depending on what car it's in... such as rear heater blower on a Multivan, I'd assume.

And all cars should have headlight washers. And a 50 liter tank to go with it, because I have to refill mine all the damn time. Alternatively a separate button for the headlight spray, instead of firing them the first time you pull the wiper stalk after starting the car and then every fifth pull after that. A huge waste of fluid.

And I wouldn't call that rear legroom redonkulous, more like adequate for grownups. :p It's one of few european cars this side of a LWB S class where you can sit in the back and still feel dignified.

It's not that much more expensive to make a car slightly longer, so why not do it? The answer is probably in marketing. Many (most?) europeans don't want a big car because they see it as too big. :dunno:
 
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For me at least, living with a Superb would be anything but. Having the largest around is terrible when everyone does parallel parking wherever the hell they please, leaves gaps too small for the superbly endowed gentleman in his Skoda.
 
SIXT is apparently a little confused about the 3er they gave me for the first night... received an invoice that had the return mileage of the Camaro combined with the outgoing mileage of the 3er and the timing of the 3er:



That's an average of about 540mph, not counting the inevitable dozens of fuel stops to maintain speed :burnrubber:

Hell, that car apparently took me further over night than my 747-8I did :lol:
 
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I want to hear what the Sixt people say when you tell them you did 869 km/h in their car!
 
I want to hear what the Sixt people say when you tell them you did 869 km/h in their car!

On average, in LA traffic! :driving:


Right now I'm trying to make US customer service take back some bogus charge they added to one of the three eBilling PDFs I received, all three had different totals... and naturally they chose to bill the highest against the CC. Better not confuse them too much with approaching the speed of sound in one of their cars.
Doesn't seem to be mileage related though :dunno:
 
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When we rented a Passat in the UK, it started out with something like 10000 miles on it. But being Australian, I wanted to actually understand the things the trip computer was telling me, so I changed it to metric. And forgot to change it back, so the car came back with like 18000km on it or something, and that was the figure they recorded. Ah well, unlimited mileage included! :lol:
 
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