Skoda Fabia
HELLO
£19,400 OTR/£21,925 as tested/£273pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Does relentless all-round competence get boring?
DRIVER
Vijay Pattni
THE SKODA FABIA IS A GOOD CAR, AND THIS PRESENTS A BIG PROBLEM. Not because bad cars are easier to talk about but more to the nature of its goodness it’s so straightforward so sensible and simple to use there’s nothing really to latch onto
Take for example the drivetrain It teams a litre cyl petrol engine with a spd manual gearbox Not wanting to get bogged down in the nuances of helmsmithery it’s a good punchy little workhorse devoid of any noticeable character Ours is the more powerful bhp version and the only gripe is that the power band is so narrow it’s sometimes a little jerky to modulate around town But not much
It’s very efficient too Skoda claims g/km of CO and we’ve been recording mpg easy Allied to this noteworthy parsimony is its noteworthy lack of pace mph takes seconds Although it’s also a little supermini built for town so expectations have been what straightforward sensible people like to call ‘managed’
It’s bigger than previous Fabias of course but it’s still fairly compact and offers very reasonable space for four adults some of them of average size too The interior layout is as per any modern VW Group car you’ve sat in of late only here there are three real human dials Sometimes being straightforward is a good thing huh
So it’s a refined comfortable economical and practical little thing there’s an umbrella in the door for example and it rides and drives well Everything about it is simple and designed to melt into the background of your life But is that all you want from a car like this to be a white OK bright red good? And will the Fabia’s simplicity be its undoing or will the ‘Colour Edition’ actually provide some colour?