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.