Hawk89

Completely agree, for the money the Octavia VRS is one of the best cars under £40k. As an all rounder nothing comes close. In the UK our vehicle excise duty (road tax) is set based upon emissions and vehicle value, when the on the road price (discounts aren't included) hits the £40k it becomes very expensive. My shortlist when looking was narrowed down to the VRS or a Gulia Veloce (With no options - now over £40k with price rises.) It was very much Head vs Heart. I'm more than happy to wait, albeit it is frustrating, as there is nothing else that gives the same bang for the buck. If I cancelled now it would be a case of making a compromise for something I don't really want and joining the back of another queue.

Carwow's delivery time table is currently showing 52 weeks for the Golf GTI / R. They aren't showing the Octavia for some reason at present, but given the Enyaq is 52+ I'm not holding my breath of seeing the car ordered in October before the winter. For anyone who doesn't like waiting, you can get a Qashqai in 4 weeks...... Carwow estimated timescales

Totally get that, was answering back on the point about the BMW salesman having to lie as in terms of production priority. Given that BMW and Ford are king of the hill in their respective organisations so should be able to provide more accurate estimates.

Seems a bit odd that they need to lie unless BMW are directing it. My brother in law is waiting for an X3, the salesman spoke to him at the weekend and told him that his production date jumps from day to day on their system. It has been moving around in both directions and is the same for pretty much every order on the system. My dad has a Ford Kuga coming and the factory gave a March delivery date and have since moved it forwards to mid February along with most orders they had on the system for March, seems Ford have managed to get their house in order atleast whilst the rest of the market is still scrambling around.

From memory ceramic coating tends to take a couple of days doesn't it and the price varies by how new the car is? I.e. the longer you wait the more they tend to charge, as they'll do additional paint correction etc. The standard dealership stuff tends to be polymer based instead which is decent enough but no where near as hard wearing.

Agree with the sentiments on here, from experience of working with a dealer it all comes down to who the car goes to in the valet bay. Some of them just rattle through everything and try get up the road at 4, there are a rare few who will stay on at night to make sure the job is done right on their list of cars. £400 feels steep, there are mobile guys locally here who charge anything from £110-150 for a full valet which includes all the extras such as sealant. They tend spend 4 or 5 hours which is a luxury dealers just don't have with the volume of cars they are trying to fire out.

Absolutely this. I had a VRS TDI on a 66 plate, picked it up in Milton Keynes and struggled to get near 35mpg on the long motorway run home. Genuinely thought it was a mistake given I was doing over 35k a year at the time and changing very regularly. By the time it had 1500 miles on the clock is was starting to look far more sensible with mid 50s being the norm.

Having previously worked for the company I suspect it is more a case of the need something in for their system to push the order to the finance company. When completing the form in the dealership you give an estimated delivery date which is sent to the finance company. They don't start the finance until the car is actually delivered so it effectively an agreement in principal, both parties can pull out of the arrangement at anytime (which is pretty rare from the finance company side of things).

Interesting article in Autocar (link here) about Skoda sales being down globally (no shock there), the UK market seems to have been pretty stable for them in comparison to most with China seeing a massive drop. They are claiming that the production issues should start to ease in the second half of this year. Hopefully this means we will all be seeing progress, especially the people with the longest wait times on here. My dealer estimate is sometime in April, he had to basically put something on the system for the finance to be accepted etc. To his credit he has been pretty open and honest about April essentially being a shot in the dark. I'm hopeful of seeing it before August as year 4 is a large service on the Astra, so will be the guts of £500 including an MOT. (Ordered on 28th October - VRS, TSI/DSG, Race Blue, Rear Camera, Travel Assist, Rear Wiper, Winter Pack Front, Blindspot). So far with friends and family ordering cars it sounds like the majority are in a similar position, my dad has been lucky with his Kuga order it has move forward into next month from March. The rest have been the same as people on here, either told nothing or given totally fictitious delivery dates that ultimately are pushed back.

The handover centres for staff are in Milton Keynes and BCA Livingston as the main centres. Hence the K registrations, as that is the band of plates which covers MK as that is where alot of the head offices are, Scania in my case. I had KS (Octavia/Superb), KV (Scirocco) and can't remember the other for the Passats and A6. The cars handed over at the satellite sites were also registered before transported. A few of my colleagues went to a Bentley dealer somewhere in Lancashire as well when it was really busy.

When I worked for Scania I changed cars every 3 months due to being on the road everyday. We basically had a choice of any VAG car upto X value then we would pay something daft like £7 a month per £1k over it. The higher up the tree the higher your base limit. The change criteria was 6 months or 7500 miles, whatever came first. It is one of the ways of getting decent used stock around the dealer networks.

I spoke to our dealer earlier to ask a couple of things about accessories and fitting a plate. No build date showing yet for our order, although wasn't really expecting one to be fair. Ordered 28th October / Guestimation of April. VRS TSI DSG / Race Blue / Travel Assist, Blind Spot monitoring, Front Winter pack, Rear camera and Rear wiper.

You should have a look around before you cancel to may sure you are cutting your nose off to spite your face, alot of manufacturers are in the same boat. Stock motors are like finding hens teeth just now.

It is amazing the difference between manufacturers. I ordered on 28th October and my dad ordered a Kuga PHEV two weeks before. Both of us used Arnold Clark dealers. I was quoted a random date April as they need something on the system (Skoda) and my dad was given an exact date in March (Ford). The garage phoned my dad yesterday to say the factory has accepted the order and have confirmed the delivery date as what he was quoted. From the experiences in here it just sounds like Skoda are closing their eyes and pulling random orders out of a hat.

Guessing you are based in Scotland? If so out of interest did you buy through AC? (maybe a swing and miss on the name). Also did you add any options out of interest?

Have read a couple of articles on the Magnesium issue, seems to be easing a little but is likely to cause issues for the next 6 months atleast - hopefully Skoda will have plenty of semi conductors in stock atleast. Bloomberg at the end of October were reporting that 35/50 plants had shut in the main production province and the rest were running at 50%, however the remaining plants are now upto around 70% production. Only 1 month into the wait and I'm already getting itchy feet, don't know how some of you long termers have coped!

Isn't necessarily a bad thing losing the virtual pedal, I appreciate they are handy. Equally they can be a pain in the rear when washing, the hose pipe used to trigger it on my old Clubman, and other times I'd looking like I was giving the car a good kick'in when it didn't want to trigger. Deal breaker for me would be losing either the camera or one of the heated things.

Had the opposite argument with the wife, I wanted White and she wanted Race Blue. Preferred not to have 3-4 years of ear ache.

Might be a dumb question but, are people getting their build week emails via the dealer or direct from Skoda? If direct from Skoda is there something to sign up to, to get them? I ordered in October so not expecting anything for the next few months, was just curious.

That's worrying, as we've specced them as well. Salesman was confident of 27-33 weeks when we ordered a few weeks ago, obviously he's incredibly optimistic going by the experiences on here. Could do with it arriving before August as the Astra is due a major service + MOT then....

When I looked a couple of weeks ago before ordering I don't remember seeing the Canton System as an option and it listed the VRS as having "8 speakers" as standard. Must be something else being changed in the background. Others are probably more clued in but could this be the change to MY22? When I worked with Toyota it was around mid October they started making the model year changes typically.

Might sound really dumb and absolutely shoot me down in flames if it is. But, does the car switch to dark mode when the lights are on? I.e. do the screens dim down once the auto lights are triggered? If so could it be something resolved via a setting elsewhere for the display rather than the camera? Appreciate the reason for the screens darkening down is so you aren't blinded at night by internal lights. Just noticed the suggestion of it maybe being brighter with the lights turned off.

Interested to know how you are getting on with the CVT / Electric range on it? I had a stint selling Toyotas in 2017 which are largely the same hybrid system (might even be identical in particular the 2.5L models). If you were super careful with the Rav you could eek out a few miles on EV around town but in reality it was more about electric assist to lower the strain on the engine and returning decent long range fuel figures. The Rav wasn't too bad at suppressing the "moo'ing" of the engine as the revs rose, it became far more intrusive the smaller the engine attached to the point the Yaris was like operating a boat.

When it comes to electrics I'm completely devoid of ability, happy to do the odd mechanical thing like brake pads / spark plugs and filters but have a fear of the electrics. Did you have the dealer strip out the camera / cable from your O3 or did you do it yourself? The 622GW offers 4k at 30fps and plus double frame rate for the two resolutions on the 522GW. So a bit smoother but, not sure that justifies double the price or not. As we are trading 2 cars in it is in the back of my mind to ask if they'll take in the Astra a couple of days early once the VRS is ready for delivery. Not sure if they'll be happy to do this as they won't be supplying and fitting used parts so can't guarantee the work as such. Will be asking them to do Mudflaps and proper mats as iirc Arnold Clark like to fit their own even on new? Maybe some of the Scottish owners can confirm?

Noticed in the accessories brochure (UK) they list the Nextbase 522GW. Halfords supplied and fitted this model with the optional rear camera on my Astra about 2 years ago, major bonus with it being hardwired in is it detects motion if the car rocks and turns the camera on. So it might not catch the car being hit whilst parked but it will certainly catch them driving off / looking at the damage. So far it has only caught a couple of junkies having a nosey around the car, guessing they tried the door or something to trigger it as it also showed them trying my neighbour's cars. I wouldn't have known other than my Astra had a "theft attempted" message displayed. Seriously impressed with the image / sound quality from the forward facing camera, rear does the job but is nothing special. Records in 3 minute chunks, would recommend it with a larger SD card. The battery life is pretty poor when you take it off the cable which is the only downfall if your taking it into the house to try pull footage off to your phone rather than plugged into a laptop. Will probably get the same again (as not sure I can justify the extra on the 622GW) on the VRS whenever it arrives in 2022.