THRIFTY AND PUNCHY

Octavia wagon leaves SUVs behind for economy

At some stage, car buyers will come to their senses and stop paying over the odds for SUVs when a conventional station wagon will do the job quite nicely.

Let’s hope there are still enough wagons around when that happens. They are becoming a rare breed in Australia, even though they are still popular in Europe.

After three months with Skoda’s Octavia wagon, we’re genuinely sad to see it leave the garage. It had a much sportier feel through the corners than an SUV, with less pogo-ing over speed humps.

The 1.4-litre turbo is a ripper as well. It might be small but it punches above its weight, with lots of pulling power low in the rev range. It averaged less than 8.0L/100km — impressive, given that most driving was in heavy city traffic (we averaged a depressing 37km/h). On our most recent freeway trip, it averaged 6L/100km.

We had zero reliability or quality issues with the Skoda over the period. The Bluetooth hooked up seamlessly every time we jumped in the car, unlike some rivals (we’re looking at you Mazda), the audio unit was above average and all the screen menus were easy to navigate.

There were a lot of things we probably wouldn’t have paid for. We didn’t use the sunroof at all and never activated the automatic parking. The traffic assistant, which stops and accelerates by itself in traffic, left far too big a gap to the car in front for impatient city drivers.

We prefer the built-in satellite navigation, although Google Maps are available through the Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, and found the speed limit warnings helpful more than once.

If you’re looking for something a little different, the Octavia wagon should be on the shopping list.