It seems they are the default answer to every “what car for …” query on here.
So then, who actually drives one?
What are the good & bad points about them?

My father has a 1.4TSI (?) Octavia – and I was surprised how nippy it was for a small engine. Seemed to drive nicely enough. However after the first <10k the mpg dropped off drastically and repeated trips to the dealership found ‘no faults’ …

I’ve got a Superb estate.

It’s good… well built and excellent value. Not very exciting, but that’s family estates for you.

Bad points… Not really.

I drive a Superb 140 TDI SE – massive, tons of leg room in the back, seats ok but not as comfortable as say a friends SAAB 93 with leather. Drives well for such a big car but not particularly agile. 140 motor has enough surge for overtaking but returns 60mpg+ driven carefully, 55mpg cruising at reasonable speeds on the motorway and recently 44mpg fully loaded with 4x bikes touring around Europe.

Octavia vRS estate here.

Bought primarily as it was by far the best value medium sized 5dr car on the market at the time. The added advantage of it having a huge boot while not actually being a huge car only became obvious once I got it. Good build quality, pretty decent spec, decent engine, reasonably cheap to run, etc, etc…….

Bad points – inexplicably doesn’t have stereo contols on steering wheel, lip on boot, er, er, that’s it really.

I’ve got a 60 plate Octavia Elegance 1.6TDi Estate.

Fuel consumption is very good. I get 45MPG+ if I’m not driving slowly. 55MPG+ if I’m on a long motorway run and sticking to 70.

It averaged 40mpg for our holiday to cornwall, 2 adults, 2 kids, boot full of bikes/clobber. 3 bikes mounted on the back (one in the boot).

Also got 45mpg+ with a roof box, camping gear and aforementioned family.

Build quality is excellent, as is the main dealer support. Servicing costs are very affordable. MOT yesterday cost £45 including two replacement rear bulbs.

Storage space is very good, much better than my previous Vectra. The spare wheel area is good for storing helmets/shoes etc, not so good when you have ripped a hole in the sidewall of the tyre. Boot is enormous, but slightly narrow.

I do miss not having steering wheel mounted controls, but the new models have them as standard I believe.

The 1.6TDI is £30 to tax, it does lack torque/power so does take a bit of getting used to in stop start traffic. I’d definitely have another one or possibly upgrade to the Superb.

Anyone who objects due to the badge really needs to give one a try.

Oh, and it prefers Shell diesel to other brands!

🙂

Octavia vrs estate here too (mkII)

Having had a mkI saloon several years back, when it came to needing an estate for bikes/dogs/camping duties I went straight for an octavia estate.

It’s a 2.0 diesel (PD) which does around 48-50 mpg generally. Roof box and a car full of Camping gear knocked it down to 45/46 last month which given the size of the car and the load I think is excellent.

It’s very spacious, comfortable, looks great ( in VRS guise) and has plenty of oomph behind it.

Echo sing1etracks comments really.

Try briskoda for lots of info

Octavia VRS Hatch, here. 170PD TDI.

I bought it as a special edition last year, complete with leather interior, DAB radio (which is bloody brilliant, by the way!), sat nav, parking sensors, cruise control, black wheels, blah, blah blah…

It’s great. 50+ mpg, loads of space inside (put the seats down and you
can get bikes in complete) and goes well enough. I honestly can’t think of a single thing wrong with it.

Si @progressivebikes is selling a Octy VRS estate here —->

If I had 6.5k I’d bloody bite his hand off.

Old 105ps 1.9 tri dsg Octavia estate here. Only downside I can think off is that they are not as big as the fanboyz on here would have you believe, but in 7 years and 80k miles it’s not missed a beat.

We got it as it had the largest boot capacity of all the medium sized estates we looked at with the rear seats in use, which is how we use it most. It was also cheaper than the rest for the spec at the time. Both these may have changed though

Looking at something like the Superb estate in a year or twos time. The boot doesn’t look that much bigger to me with the rear seats up, but measurements suggest that that is just my eyesight.

Edit- fuel consumption is as mentioned up there, the steering wheel radio controls were on the leather steering wheel upgrade we needed dut to a one handed wife…..

I’ve got a 2012 1.4TSi SE. Got 53mpg from Glasgow to Skye and back. 43mgpg in mixed use. It pulls better at low revs than the 1.8 petrol Mondeo it replaced. The boot is huge, slightly wider between the arches than my 2002 Mondeo.

Downsides? Tyre noise on poor surfaces is worse than the Mondeo. I’ll be looking at noise ratings when the tyres need changed. The seats feel a bit firm at first but that said they are comfortable on long drives.

love my tdi octavia estate is 12 years old just about to reach 100k ,air con pump
and faulty door lock only failures ,,very sound car if not very exciting
brilliant mpg 60mpg easy if not ragged but its not that sort of car .
may well buy another poss look at 4×4/scout version

I’ve got a superb estate – it’s an A6 SLine TDi.

Had 59 plate superb saloon 2.0 diesel for three years – as Johndon says , think A6 and you’ve got it.

Split rear boot lid (saloon then with the flick of a switch a hatchback the size of a cavern) was a great feature. Not really and downsides to be honest.

59 plate octavia 1.6 TDI estate here, done 58k miles and I’ve never managed to drop it below 45mpg average including several fully laden alps trips at 80mph plus. Normally returning 55mpg+. Had no issues with it at all, I’m about to replace it now though, 2.0 TDI new octavia estate to give a but more power for towing, more boot space (virtually the same as the superb now) and its more efficient again.

Driven both (OH used to work for Skoda). The Superb really is superb, a great mile eater, lovely and relaxed to drive. We had an Octavia VRS for a while (Petrol), which was a real hoot although it really needed AWD as you couldn’t use all the torque in the wet e.g. wheel spin pulling out of junctions. If we didn’t get company cars I’d happily buy a VRS.

I drove a colleagues Superb estate for a few hundred miles. I think it was a 170bhp 2.0 diesel but might have been 140 or so. The engine isn’t really that good, the co2 is pretty high and obviously so was his tax.

It was a pretty boring car all round to be honest, which is better than it sounds when sitting on the motorway. It is big but doesn’t feel like it, much easier to park than I thought it would be. It wasn’t for me (too boring) but overall a descent car.

Octavia 4×4. Brilliant bit of kit. Well built, pleasant to drive, good on fuel, quick enough for real world driving. Stick it’s winter tyres on and it will go a lot further than most family estates. I’d buy another

I got a new model Octavia as a hire car and when told at the desk that’s what it was going to be I was looking forward to driving it given all the reviews you read about them. But I have to say I was really disappointed.

My biggest gripe was the road noise, it was terrible particularly on the motorway. My colleague in the passenger seat took a call on his mobile and I had to slow to 50 for him to hear the other person. I thought the seats were really uncomfortable after an hour or so and it was poorly spec’d for a mid range model. No cruise control really bugged me. The ride was very harsh as well.

My Mrs has a Mk6 golf S and while it’s also got quite a bit of road noise it’s nowhere near as bad as the new Octavia. Economy wasn’t great either, although it only had 200 miles on the clock so that may improve?

I did however like the DSG box so it wasn’t all bad!

Has anyone drove the 1.6 TDi Octavia and 1.6TDi Superb and directly compared them?

The Superb is the team car of choice for road racing teams – acres of legroom (more than a Merc S-Class), good economy, fast, easy/comfy to drive, huge boot.

Having said that, I’ve only ever driven them in road races, I’ve never had to sit on a motorway for hours in one or use it as an everyday car…
I do remember the Octavia VRS as being astonishingly uncomfortable though, the firmed-up suspension and extra power made it very quick but utterly horrible to drive.

My bro in law and I take my dads 170tdi superb estate 600 miles to Austria each year for skiing. I’d hate to drive anything else: it’ll sit happily at 140k on the autobahn (@~45mpg) all day, you get out at the other end feeling relaxed, alert and happy, the DSG box is great and the interior is a very pleasant place to be. There’s so many toys to play with and the ride is very good indeed. Ok, so it’s not a 530d touring, but I like my fillings left in place and comes without any preconceptions of your mental health / male appendage dimensions.

It’s an absolute bargain too, check one out then take a look at an equally-specced A6 avant (which sits on the same floor pan) You can pretty much buy two superbs for the price of one a6!

I had a mk3 2.0D elegance on test for the weekend. I was very pleasantly surprised.

I was about to place an order for one when Skoda announced the vRS mk3. I’ve ordered one of them instead. Diesel estate.

lots of positive comments
nobody has mentioned any DPF issues – did VW get their design right?

54 plate 1.9 TDI 90, only sold it to move to Oz.

Solid, reliable car it only went to the garage for servicing and once when the electric window stopped working.
minimum 45mpg up to 60 on a very good run. Big load area for the car, easy to pack, drove well.

No complaints at all.

MIL has an 04 Octavia i.9 TDi Estate from new & generally flawless apart from a couple of months back she heard a clunk when coming up the drive after returning from a 300 mile round trip.

Turns out that the axle has come away from its fixings almost completely & both rear wheels are rubbing on the wheel arches. It needed a new rear axle & has been since fine but could have been disastrous if it had happened on the Motorway.

Garage reckoned they’d seen it only a few times with Octavias but nowhere as near as bad as this.

The road leading to the drive has 3 small speed bumps on it & she lives close to the sea so there are contributing factors but no idea if another brand/model would have suffered a similar catastrophic failure after only 9 years..

As per one of my recent posts I’m looking at replacing A4 Avant with either a 2008+ Passat or 2010 Superb. Former is perfectly capable but hard to find the spec I want. Latter is just awesome, especially the fully loaded 170 DSG Elegance I drove last week. Incredible amount of kit and after-sales service and running costs for the money. Personally can’t justify the extra spend so an Octavia (only a VRS though) might now enter the fray. A6 and 525d possibly the only other options.

My biggest gripe was the road noise, it was terrible particularly on the motorway. My colleague in the passenger seat took a call on his mobile and I had to slow to 50 for him to hear the other person. I thought the seats were really uncomfortable after an hour or so and it was poorly spec’d for a mid range model. No cruise control really bugged me. The ride was very harsh as well.

I’d have to agree with those points. We’ve got them as pool cars in work, I quite liked them for short trips but then I had 6 hours on the motorway in one. Ours do have cruise control, but I agree that was noisey and not overly comfortable on a longer drive (and this is saying something givens normal drives)

Local minicab ran fleet if TDi Octavias to daft mileages, as in 300k plus in 2 years. And these were driven very hard.

I tested (all auto estates, and over 3 weeks)the Superb, 520 d and E2nn d. I thought the Superb was the best of the three for a whole variety of reasons, then the 5 and lastly the E.

Superb
+ Interior space: by far the biggest “feeling” car, certainly the most legroom and cabin space. Rear space is amazing.
+ Lots of glass and a very airy feeling to it.
+ Rides very well
+ Standard kit on the Elegance / DSG is very high
– Interior is a bit plasticky in places
– I had some problems with the satnav malfunctioning
– I’m struggling – I was very impressed.

520
+ Nicest place to sit as a driver.
+ Nicest interior
– Rear leg room is a shocker.
– If you have kids the doors are very high so they can’t see outside very easily
– Ride is pretty bad. Lots of harshness and bump feedback.
– Underwhelmed overall (I know it’s not a 535).

E
+ Boot is massive.
+ I’m struggling
– Really uninspiring to drive.
– Auto likes to hunt for gears
– Standard tyres had awful grip (carpark on leaves caused it all sorts of problems!)
– Things like the rear parking sensors are really poorly designed (Lights weren’t visible with the seat height dropped)

The transmission tunnels on the 5 and the E are a PITA for carrying passengers as well.

Owned my mk2 Octavia vRS estate for 3 years now. Usually swap and change cars much sooner but its been great. Had a couple of very minor issues (MAF sensor popped off – zip tie sorted that) and the EML came on after filling up with emergency Asda fuel (usually run it on V-Power or Tesco equivalent) but in 3 years of ownership, very minor things.

As people have mentioned, its reasonably quick – quick enough for me. The boot is great for riding/camping/holidaying etc with wife and 2 small kids. Even the TFSI engine is reasonably frugal unless you’re absolutely spanking it. Other good points… easy to retrofit stuff from other cars across the VAG range and newer Octavias if wanted. Mine is a 2006 car which came with the basic Stream headunit. £300 and voila – an OEM Skoda Columbus sat nav/SD card reader etc head unit slotted straight in with no fuss. Standard ride was fine I’d have said but I like a firm ride (ooo errr). My standard shocks are now in a box in the cellar anyway and I’ve got a set of AP coilovers on mine. Seem to be well liked by the mk5 GTI crowd and no complaints yet in a couple of months of use including a week long fully loaded holiday jaunt down to the Isle of Wight.

Going to be getting rid of ours maybe early in 2014 but looking at the prices of other stuff I fancy, I think top of the list will be another one (either a FL or the pre-FL LE model which was basically a pre-FL on the outside and a FL on the inside with full leather etc). Strip off all the mods on mine and fit it to the new one and away I go – another 3 years of happy motoring!

Only negative I have with mine is the rear suspension is way too soft. With a full car and 3 bikes hanging off the back its not far off the bump stops.

johndoh – Member
I’ve got a superb estate – it’s an A6 SLine TDi.

Errr, no it’s not.

I had a Superb wagon for a couple of weeks out in Cyprus recently. Not sure what the model was but it had a decent enough engine in it and was fully loaded. Lots of space, good build quality, drove fine.

It wasn’t something I particularly felt any desire for, but for a sensible well priced load lugger I can’t imagine why anyone would buy anything else, let alone something like an A6.

My father has a 1.4TSI (?) Octavia – and I was surprised how nippy it was for a small engine

Pretty sure that engine goes up to 180bhp in certain VAG cars, and can easily be mapped to over 200, from things I’ve read. If true, that’s a stonking amount of poke for such a small motor.

I think its the 1.4TSI in the new Fabia/Polo/Ibiza vRS/GTI/Cupra.

The 1.4 in the fabia vrs etc is turbocharged and supercharged and will indeed map to 200bhp+. The one in the octy is turbo only – puts out 140bhp in the new mk3. Not sure there’s any maps available yet but guess you’d get 160bhp ish out of it.