patnmand

Late to the party - Picked up my 1.5 Monte Carlo in July. Wish it was this clean now. My wife and I now have his'n'hers Fabia Monte Carlos.

I haven't had a heated screen since a Ford Orion I owned in the 1990s. I still miss it - they really are amazing!

Llanigraham perhaps you can answer a question I've never been able to get an answer to and don't have enough steep hills to test it on. If you engage HDC and first gear, does the HDC try to maintain the speed you set? In the manual it says HDC works in Neutral, 1st, 2nd and (I think) 3rd but I've never quite understood what it will actually try to do and can't see any demos anywhere. I did try it in wales in the summer and it seemed to want to keep the car at the speed I'd set with the throttle. Is that right? Before you shoot me down in flames for being an ignoramus please understand that I bought this Yeti because I wanted a more powerful engine, not because of the 4WD. If they'd have done the 140 in a 2WD I'd happily have bought that. Now, to add my tuppence worth to the winter tyre debate. I've had them on a Superb, 2WD Yeti and now on my 4WD Yeti. I wouldn't be without them. I did have socks on the Superb for a year but the problem with them is that, in order to stop them wearing out, you have to take them off when the road clears (and keep your speed right down all the time they're on). That's fine but you then have dirty wet bits of material you have to stow somewhere (and I know you get a bag, but once the inside of the bag is dirty and wet then you've got something else to worry about drying out). Also, if you subsequently need them again (as I did when arriving home for example), you have to fiddle around putting them back onto a cold snowy wheel in a wheelarch full of slush. They do the job, but they're not terribly convenient. Winter tyres will outperform summer ones at any time the temperature is below 7c, they're very good in the wet and amazing on snow/ice. To me it's not a luxury so I can go and play when it snows, but a necessity. Don't I want every opportunity to be able to stop or steer my way out of trouble? If it makes the difference between a near miss or an accident then it's money well spent.

I have to wonder whether this Skoda (no. 7) will be my last. Not because of any major issues, but simply because I don't like the new corporate nose. The only car I like it on is the Citigo and that's just too small sadly. I may have to go German or Japanese next time :-(

This happened to my Superb. Needed a new fan I'm afraid.

All I know is that my blue one is faster than the grey one that preceded it, therefore the blue ones are faster than the grey ones. However, I think the fastest one I know of must be BossFoxs red one, so the grey ones are the slowest, then then blue ones, and the red are fastest. Then we just have to work out where to put in all the other colours.....

I'm with Direcr Line. They didn't try to charge me when I rang them, just sent out new documents and reminded me to let them know when I changed them back. This was the same last year, so it definitely looks as if the £20 charge was a bit of a fast one. Having said that I am getting a bit fed up with them and will definitely look at Skoda's own insurance come renewal time. The quote I had from them when i changed car in October was a lot lower than DL.

I had a 2wd 110, and I couldn't fault it for refinement or fuel economy. My only niggle was that it felt just a little bit underpowered, especially 4 up. I have a 140 now. Lots of power, but fuel economy nowhere near as good. You pays yer money...

Wow, I wasn't trying to start a "my hill is bigger than your hill" competition, honest! All I was saying is that there are hills around here, and the fuel consumption is very sensitive to them. I'll get back in my box now.

Or maybe I'm trying too much!! One of the things I like about the 140 is the urge when you put your foot down. My last car before coming to Yetis was a 170 DSG Superb and I really missed the imperious acceleration when I moved to a 110 Yeti, hence the change. Having said that I'm not always looning about the place. What I've noticed in normal driving is that the 140 is much more sensitive to hills and the way it is driven than the 110. Any slight incline (and there are a lot of hills in my bit of Kent) and the fuel consumption rockets, even if you just maintain speed. I reckon I'm probably averaging similar consumption to the 170 Superb, but it was just a bit of shock at first after the teetotal 110 Yeti is all.

I was surprised by the thirst of the 140 4x4 initially, having achieved high 40s with my previous 110 2wd. However, since I started tracking it on Fuelly you can see I'm getting about 40, which isn't too bad.

Congratulations. That Shark Blue is lovely. Very much like the Aqua blue but just a little darker maybe? Very nice anyway.

Mm. I have a tiny suspicion that mine might have been an ex-rental. I asked what the history of it was when I test drove it as it wasn't a local vehicle, and was only a year old. I was told the guy had changed it for a DSG L&K, but when I got the V5 after buying it I saw that it had been company owned, and the company (among other things) did rental. 4X4 Yeti seems a strange choice for a rental car though, so who knows? Short of ringing the company up and asking (and they probably wouldn't tell me) I don't know how you find out, or what you do with the information. I'm sure one of the boxes you have to tick when you trade a car in is to say that it wasn't a rental, so I would imagine that the same would apply to the car you're buying. Dunno - just a niggling doubt really. I've got a good relationship with the dealer so I don't imagine it would be in their interests to p*** me off with a dodgy motor.

Don't know anything about Arnold Clarke, but I've just been on their website and they seem to have a number of 13 plate 1.2 Elegance Yetis in Aqua Blue. I wonder where they all came from? They look like a batch as the registrations are pretty close to each other. Just curious really - you don't tend to see batches of Yetis like that.

Today's the day! Hope all goes well and looking forward to the pictures.