Longship

If you can save £7k off list price, £3k in extra tax becomes a slightly moot point. :)

In your position, I'd get a vRS with less than 1k miles for around £35k. Just because you have the power doesn't mean you have to use it. My vRS 245 just did an overnight trip of 463 miles at an average 56.5mpg :)

I know I have a leak in my AC system as it failed a few days ago and my OBD reader reported a static pressure of 11psi. Getting it in to Skoda will be a real pain but is anyone able to look at their system pressure on a cold non-running engine and let me know what a normal value should be? Just to be clear, it will be going in for a warranty repair and I'll get a service done at the same time. I have a long family trip planned for the end of July so it needs to be fixed by then.

Typical, just did a very long overnight journey and wanted to see how that impacted the score. I've no doubt that Skoda are still collecting all that data, as will most (all?) modern connected vehicles, it's the clarity of the end purpose that needs to be addressed.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the speed sign recognition is not infallible. Plenty of times it'll pick up the wrong sign and tell me I'm too fast or slow, so hardly evidential quality. Vehicle event data recorders though ... ;)

I'm not sure that the camera system is smart enough to recognise the advance warnings but I wouldn't worry about insurance or enforcement issues. The data goes to Skoda and is held for a year and they need your explicit consent to share with 3rd parties.

Are these manual cars without the mode selector?

If the "spillage" hasn't caused a problem then I can't see what grounds there are for charging you?

On a previous (non-Skoda) car, access to servers and therefore vehicle, tended to be flaky at the start of the month. It was put down to server capacity being taken up users downloading journeys etc for expense mileage claims. Not sure how true that was ...

Do Octavia's have torque vectoring by braking? This has been known to increase wear on rear pads.

My car doesn't get used very often, and only for very long journeys when it does so I clean the rear discs by pulling the handbrake button when moving and off the accelerator. Obviously only done on a quiet road when confident not going to affect other road users. Done that with my past 4 cars with electronic handbrakes, not comfortable with leaving the handbrake off even though I have a level drive.

Recently bought the traffic sign recognition add-on and it's fairly useful, but I understood it to be a one-off payment?

For the definitive list of equipment fitted, you can contact Skoda customer services and request a build sheet. You'll probably have to provide proof of ownership, such as V5 scan.

My vRS came with Goodyear Eagle F1's as stock and while they were fine for warmer weather, they weren't good for the cold. Did less than 1500 miles on the F1's before I swapped them out for Bridgestone Turanza 6's a couple of months ago, which I aim to keep on all year round. No complaints so far.

Some models do come with a PTC heater element as standard, although I think they could be mostly diesels. Can you look at the option codes your car has to find out? A previous Jaguar I owned had a 1kw PTC element in the vent system and that defrosted the screen and started to warm the interior within seconds of a cold start.