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Really interesting reading this one back. I did indeed end up with a Stinger GTS. March 2019 car purchased in July with less than 2k miles on it. Just below 6k miles now. Best car I’ve ever had by a long, long way. Relaxed and very comfy in Eco with a super smooth V6, very quick and focused (for a big car) in Sport. Also bought Mrs Dunc the planned Golf 1.4 GT TSI. 150 bhp DSG. She loves it!! 2 keepers! Thanks again for all the advice and thoughts guys.

My suggestion would be to adopt what some parts of Europe have. Do not force people onto winters or all seasons but the law states if you drive on roads in wintry conditions you must have winter rated tyres. So go out in the snow on summers and you are illegal. Driving in the UK in the snow is a nightmare that most parts of northern Europe manage perfectly well.

Manufacturers are also to blame. Our last three Skoda's 2x 1.2TSi Yeti and 1.6TDi Octavia all came with high performance summer tyres rated to 186mph. For those vehicles and the UK climate they would be much better being delivered with an all season. Or at least offer the choice when buying new.

No hill hold assist will stop you rolling back or forward for a few seconds to assist you to hill start. Autohold will allow you to come to a stop and release the brake pedal, It will hold you stationary until you are ready to move. Obviously this is great in an auto as you can pull up and stop in Drive and the car will just sit there until you press the accelerator. VAG only fit this to vehicles with Auto box as there are fail safes. If Autohold is disengaged for any reason the EPB is applied.

Ordered a couple of these last night for £30 for the pair so I'll give them a go. I think we're good on this. Horsey people who have done far more towing than me have looked at the trailer when hitched and were pretty satisfied. It's a double axel trailer built for two horses and carrying only one so the weight distribution is as planned. Yes and I've taken instruction on pulling an animal. He's an experienced horse and good at loading and well behaved in the trailer. There's not much issue on that side; it was more the car I wanted to sort out and make sure it's not going to die due to silly mistakes.

^^^Valid points for your reality on the south coast however here at the other end of the UK (and many in between) we've been having frosts since mid October and can have substantial snow storms as late as April on our cold/wet/greasy roads. Hence my earlier comment about all season tyres for all seasons. Apologies I don't want to seem like I'm arguing you down. At the end of the day if summer tyres are what you want and they work for your needs then that's what you use. And the rest of us'll use what we need to use.

No you are confusing ACC with lane assist. If you have lane assist on, you need to indicate to temporarily disable the lane assist to avoid “wrestling with the steering”. ACC does not resist you changing lanes. Anyway, why would you not want to indicate when you change lanes? It is required by the Highway Code and good driving practice. If you only indicate when you think there is someone to indicate to, what happens when someone is somewhere not expected? Or are you perfect and the only human being to never make a mistake?

I drive in North Dorset. Last winter we had an evening of rain followed by a clear night. The next morning on one corner where the sun had not warmed the road surface the rain from the night before was cold. I went round this corner with a slight steering twitch, the car following me went through the fence and in to a field. No snow to be seen, but I did have the right tyres on the car. They also work very well across ploughed fields. 🙄 Thanks AG Falco

Slow behind a few gritters getting to Perth in the past hour. Now in Edinburgh and hopefully what ever accident has caused delays near Livingston is cleared before I head across the near tropical central belt then south.

Well readers, she’s still here, still plodding along and still getting used as a van/people carrier/taxi at every opportunity. Rapidly approaching the 180k mark, it’s time I updated the thread with stuff that’s been done, going to be done and is on the wish list of being done to her If you’ve read my other thread “Daffodil” - blinding read by the way, just taking an eternity!!!!, I needed a 2.5” bore Milltek centre section exhaust for it, couldn’t find a used one, they don’t make new anymore so I robbed the one off the black one. To replace it I went to the finest exhaust shop money can buy. eBay. For the princely sum of a mere £169 I purchased a decat, centre section and shock horror a straight through rear section with a bolt on oval tip. Cue much pi55 taking on the group chat about being a grey haired 45yr old chav, blah blah.... Truth is, it fits ace, and if I’m being totally honest is just about quiet enough when commuting/pottering about. It definitely IS louder when on WOT, and it makes quite amusing noises when and if you clip the Rev limiter. See that inner child never really goes away! It’s more than livable with on a daily and as the turbo isn’t the OE KKK Grenade, it doesn’t make that silly owl noise either. Win win. Exhaust aside it’s not had any other mechanical work, but I did need new tyres on the front before the bad weather comes. I took a decision to try and run winter tyres all year this year, and I had some fitted just before the cambelt change at 150k. These have now been on 28k miles and had got down to 2.5mm to 3.0mm across the tread and wet weather grip has suddenly become questionable, so they have lasted as long as the previous set of Pilot Sport 3’s and equally as long as the original set of budget 17”s. Hence the decision to fit another pair of 205 40 17 Nankang winters to it, not before I started getting the wheels refurbished. another colour change again, this time to light gunmetal to match the yellow car. The car is currently suffering an issue with the headlights performance dropping off drastically, I’m devising a solution to this which i’ll update the thread with shortly, but to coincide with the new lights black mask appearance I’ve had the grille painted gloss black. Again. Hopefully this will tie the front end together from a colour perspective and again match the yellow one. I’ll show you what I’ve been up to with the headlights soon!

Why just central belt?

Thanks guys, and appreciated @penguin17 I thought the colour might suit you too! As discussed a lot above, I was very tempted by the 280 Sportline. I think they look awesome and the 4WD appeals. As does the huge space. But the Stinger has other qualities. It certainly feels an event every time I turn on the V6. It is so smooth, and the upgraded 2019 exhaust sounds amazing. Bouncing off the walls of the narrow streets in my village, the tunes really make me smile. In fact I have the sound actuator completely turned off, so good does it sound on its own. The power and particularly the huge torque is addictive, especially so in Sport (365 bhp, 376 lb ft). Finally the toys - it has everything you could imagine! Finding a Superb (or S5 Sportback or Arteon) with as much kit was verging on the impossible. The heated seats in the rear are great for the kids, and they are heated and ventilated up front. Heated wheel too. Also new for 2019 is a manual override that will stay in auto once selected (in Sport and Sport +) and an enhanced head-up display. The 720W Harmon / Kardon is just amazing too! With the 7 year warranty, I would recommend looking at a 2-3 year old one soon. That could be an incredible bargain.

So, Emil has ordered a Electric Skoda Citigo. How much are they? I'd guess approx £17,000 or maybe more. And that's after the Goverment subsidy! Me thinks that's an awful lot of money for a city car? Be it Electric or Petrol. My advice to anybody is - don't jump in and buy an EV at the moment, in the next 3 to 5 yrs there's going to be more choice, better EV vehicles with greater range & relative to what you pay today, they will come down in price. One more thing, when the EV Nissan Leaf came out approx 10 yrs ago, it cost about £30,000 and had a range of approx 60 miles. The range between charges was awful, making the car almost unusable apart from going down the shops or the school run. You can now buy one of those early Nissan Leafs from about £6,000 second hand. My God, massive depreciation going on there.

Things are starting to change in the UK, go back 3 years and would rarely see an all season tyre advertised Now lot more talk of them (and a lot more makes), but problem remains most people are stuck with receiving summer tyres on a new car, and therefore feel they need to do 25-30k miles before changing them, as they have been paid for. Personally I wish most cars came with option of one wheel size down with all seasons (even if no financial saving) as most people in UK do not need tyres rated at 168-186 mph that are suitable for +40c summer temperatures. The smaller wheel size increases comfort on poor road surfaces which many would think preferable to high speed handling and very firm ride. The other big misunderstanding is all season and winter tyres are better in cold weather, even if there isn't any snow (some think wrongly they are only for snow) Remember a salted road can stay damp at -5c and summer tyres are usual hard and not grippy, and thus poor when very cold. Do you really want to be doing 70mph on a heavily salted winter motorway at -5 (or colder) with tyres that have little cold weather grip

The quantity of misinformed people who refuse to use an all season tyre to suit UK driving conditions (or a full winter tyre in certain parts of the country or if you are a high mileage user in the winter months) continues to astonishes me. Probably explains why every year vast swaths of the country grinds to a hault after 2 flakes of snow falls. That's the blue touch paper light! Let's sit back and see what happens. 😁

I rarely look at or post on Briskoda these days, in part because of the utter chaos of multiple new threads started on long established topics (which makes finding useful information difficult, or indicates a lack of effort by posters to find existing topics), the lack of thought given to the titles of new thread, and the dearth of intelligent contributions among so much dross throughout the forum. However it's a public forum to a degree and contributors are free (within the bounds of common courtesy, decency and legality) to post as they wish. It would be a poor world if everyone thought and acted alike. I may not agree, but I defend your right, etc, etc. The Rapid The Rapid and Octavia are two different cars. Buyers of a loaded Rapid might have wanted to have a car bigger than the Fabia, smaller than the Octavia but did want some of the "luxuries". They might not have been bothered by the somewhat negative reviews of the Rapid generally. I have a friend with one and he regards it as one of the better cars he's owned in his 40 years' driving, and he's had some highly desirable motors of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Having driven it, I agree. My own experience is nearly 700,000 miles in 50 years and over a hundred different cars. By 21st century standards, it ticks all the boxes for a competitively priced small/medium car with a decent boot for the European market. It does nothing badly. More importantly, it doesn't do anything outstanding, and maybe that's its biggest fault. In my view it's bland, and to many people that's unforgiveable in a car. Skoda launched the Rapid to fill a gap in their range. It was on sale in the UK for seven years and similarly in Europe, during which time it sold over 408,000 Rapids. (Not to mention sales elsewhere such as India and China.) If it wasn't making a profit, or drawing new customers into the "world of Skoda", the accountants wouldn't have left it on sale for so long. OK, not huge sales figure compared with the likes of Ford Fiestas, etc, but in many European markets the home manufacturer (e.g. Peugeot/Citroen in France, Fiat/Alfa in Italy, VW in Germany) is the default option - bought out of patriotism first rather than product quality. The Kamiq (getting back on topic) For many reasons, and many of those spurious, the Urban SUV (or whatever current acronym is popular with the marketing department) is the style of the age. Whether it's only a couple of inches higher than normal (whatever normal is) or you need a step to climb in, the taller/higher body is the one that sells. Offroad/4WD ability for most buyers is irrelevant. (I know a Range Rover owner who won't mount a kerb and never drives in snow or on grass.) Skoda must think that the Kamiq fits the gap between the mainstream five-door hatchback (Scala) and the faux-offroader (Karoq), and on the face of it the Kamiq seems to fill the brief. Having watched the several Youtube reviews on the Kamiq from across Europe I'm inclined to look on the car favourably. Prices? How many "buyers" these days do actually buy? According to my local dealer, most customers regard the monthly cost of a PCP as a rental, the car gets swopped after three years for a newer one. It's possible to spend hours looking at websites to specify a car and compare it with a competitor from another make, but it's near impossible to compare like with like. And who's to say that generally a VW is "better" than a Skoda? Or one size wheel is wrong and another is right? Not me, though I do have my own preferences. What it all comes down to is PERSONAL preference. Providing a customer does adequate (I mean a LOT of) research, then whichever car they choose it should be the right one for them. I had a Saab 9-3 for six months and found the seat extremely uncomfortable. Other Saab 9-3 owners couldn't understand it. But the seat in the 9-5 I changed it for was so comfortable I could drive it over 200 miles without stopping and not be tired. Again, it's all down to PERSONAL preference. On that basis, I'll be looking at the Kamiq with an open mind. Given the right specification, it could be the replacement for my Octavia vRS next year. But it might not.

I'd be nervous towing a horse with an ordinary car, whilst the load might be within the max tow limit of the car those figures are misleading in the extreme as the max limits referred to are just the restart ability on a gradient (8 or 12% depending on maker) and are only for a flat bed load, so not a great big wind catcher like a horsebox or caravan!! This being something of a fake tow limit is where the 85% recommendation (as silver1011 mentions) comes in - the theory is that 'the tail doesn't wag the dog' if the loaded car is that much heavier than the load, BUT that's without the load having the room to turn around,and a centre of gravity 4 foot above the tarmac, or worse penned to one side of a trailer!. You want a great big 4WD planet killer - borrow one from the horsey set.

The highway code is way behind modern car systems and even further behind when we consider EV.

I have had my rear lights altered to be on all the time with the DRL's, no number plate lights until the dipped beam comes on, its surprising how many people drive around in poor weather with only the DRL's on and as you say with no rear lights lit

It's doesn't say you should use sidelights. It does say you should apply the parking brake. But there IS something you can do about having your foot in the brake, when it doesn't need to be... I don't really get the issue, it's second nature to me, I don't even realise I'm doing it, to the point that if I don't have a manual parking brake I'm automatically reaching for it without thinking and failing to find it with my left hand, hence it's annoying. It's such little effort to use a brake properly.

Too much hassle. Brake lights aren't going to blind anyone unless they're determined to stare directly at them.

I use neutral and handbrake at lights etc, so I don't blind the people behind. I don't like sitting behind someone with brake lights on so I don't do that to others. Enough reason for me not to want autohold.

And me... I much prefer to use a proper starting handle to turn the engine over, those futuristic keys will make holes in my pockets.... 😏

I have no idea with FL’s you’ll have to check the pins but it’s possible they didn’t change them. Oh, go on then 😂

How about another MK1 vRS? Mine will be up for sale shortly. 64k, garaged, unmolested, practically like new.....and in Surrey.

www.lidl.co.uk/en/p/car-accessories/castol-engine-oil-assortment ** Other Supermarkets, Oils and prices are available **

Yeah, I'd probably give that a miss if I were you, a lot of bad press on here for those CG kits. Please try and ignore the whole "Stage 1, stage 2" crap, it's just meaningless marketing drivel. You want a quality clutch from a reputable manufacturer unless you want to spend half your waking hours under the thing instead of driving it.

We've been running All Season tyres (Cross Climates) for years now and wouldn't go back to just summers where we live (edge of the Peak District on a hill where we get quite a lot of snow). However, before I became a convert I used to buy summer tyres with a directional V-Tread and open block tread pattern precisely because they perform better in bad weather. I'm definitely not a fan of the current summer tyre patterns of big circumferential grooves and large swathes of solid rubber

Octy 4 will have EPB. The gear selector in this shot is near identical to the Golf.

I’ve had the Columbus that Jeff has above and the newer one with no physical buttons. The former is better from a user experience as the hard buttons on the outside act as shortcuts and make menu navigation much easier. FWIW this helps with reducing finger prints and smudges on the screen. The newer screen seems to have a better resolution and is aesthetically much nicer, it makes the interior a little more clean, crisp and modern. In either case I like the position of the unit as I’m not a fan of the head units that sit off/above the dash like they’re an afterthought. So IME the older Columbus is better to use; the newer one is better to look at.

It used to be 3; Superskoda sell the OE netting system and that has 3 nets included: http://www.superskoda.com/Skoda/SUPERB-III/Superb-III-Combi-original-Skoda-boot-netting-system-SILVER May have changed though, usual 'specification can change when we feel like it or have supply change issue' rules apply.

I was just thinking the same thing!👍

It's called logic based on experience and it is not a straight process but rather a decision-wise one.

Yep my XF is the same. I have a physical auto button and temp buttons but the rest is touchscreen. But what I find more frustrating is the climate seats can be heated or cooled and separate zones can be selected. It's all done through touch screen and is a complete faff and difficult to do while driving. Somethings just work better with a physical button of rotary dial.

Have to say I was just as surprised.

Agreed. My disco sport has the worst of both worlds. Manual controls for temp but touch screen for directing the flow to windscreen/face/feet. It’s a right old faff to change. Looking forward to getting my octy which has good old fashioned controls.

Auto light systems are good for low light levels and most are good enough for rain as they come on with wipers. But for daytime fog very questionable. In daytime fog a manual override is usually required and it seems many drivers don't bother.

Yep, if you spend hours in the car every day for work or commuting then Auto box and Auto Hold is a match made in heaven.

I just couldn't wait electric Skoda. I ordered Mii Electric the other day. Previous e-up! was so amazing that I trust Mii Electric is even better.

3M Perfect It for machine (with the cyan cap) and my Bosch PEX270AE orbital sander with a sheep wool sponge made my old Audi 80cc (I miss that car) bright and shiny as new. Even now, when I repair a dent, I still use the above to make the finish smooth. 3M has a whole range of shinning products, each one for a specific reason but it is costly to obtain all of them. I found that the above is the best for generic use. With a little more effort will give a great result.

I'd much rather have a normal handbrake. In fact I simply wouldn't buy a car without one. It's simple, it works, you have complete control. Less to go wrong. I've driven many many hire cars with electric parking brakes and hated the experience in each and every one. I find myself reaching for the brake at every stop. Tbh I don't really rate having hill hold, it's a function that's just not needed. But then, I also drive a manual as I don't really see changing gear as a hardship or a computer trying to predict what I want as a bonus.

But if you had autohold you wouldn't need the handbrake. Once you've had Autohold a manual handbrake is a pain. (Autohold is a system that holds hydraulic pressure onto all four wheels and releases instantly. It doesn't actually use the EPB but VAG only fit it to models with EPB)

Replaced the rear bushing on the front control arms today. Replaced with bushings from PSB: https://psbushings.co.uk/product/2-x-vw-golf-mk7-front-wishbone-rear-poly-polyurethane-psb-bush-kit-2012-to-2017/ This completely cured the creaking I have been hearing for a while now. I did the front bushings a while ago and I regret not doing them all at the same time. You can see that the bushing is deformed and the rubber is separating from the metal casing. The "kidney" cutouts are also deforming which causes the creaking/groaning. In fact I've just realised the best word to describe what I was hearing was a squelch... Few before and afters:

The update portal is working again http://updateportal.skoda-auto.com/en-GB

When I first bought it I said it's like a TARDIS inside....

A non stick alternative https://www.leyo-motorsport.com/skoda-billet-paddle-shift-extension?lightbox=dataItem-jn5oltfv1 I have these in black & there so easy to fit, no cheap sticky tape or having to remove steering wheel, these just screw over the existing factory dsg paddles via a grub screw & they don't mark the factory paddles when removing either. So much easier now when changing gear from the bottom half of the steering wheel & very secure.

Managed to put it on the classifieds on here last night. That was a struggle! She's still sleeping.......

Wow, that looks lovely.... Hope you have a fair price in mind, not too low! Local papers. Autotrader can be good, although you may get dealers coming with wads of cash trying to knock you down. Ebay will likely get some good buyers, but also a lot of timewasters, scammers and bellends who either don't read the ad (important if you're not willing to personally deliver it to Stornoway), or cannot fathom why you won't ship to Uzbekistan. I hear Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace can be useful, though I've never used either myself. Of course, there is a Cars For Sale section right here on the forum too... So what are the two you're keeping? The Merc and....?

The light on the left is the glow plug light. Curiously, if you have a glow plug fault the engine management light will probably come on, and the glow plug light could be a fault with the EGR valve or some such issue. As regards the diagnosyics telling you that the DPF additive needs refilling.... I think someone is mistaken. You need a diagnostic scan with VCDS to find out what the issue is, most garages will simply use a code reader which might give misleading results.

George, there is a wonderful thing called a mobile phone, that can even do messages, some cars even have them fitted and you don't need to take your hands off the wheel. Not Space Travel or Rocket Science 🛫