Little Jo

The best advice if you want to pass your advanced test is to incoporate the techniques into your normal driving as much as possible. Let's face it, unless you do, you won't reap the benefits of being an advanced driver. At 90 minutes, the advanced test is long enough to test you fully under a wide range of road conditions. The examiner will watch what you are doing and will home in on any inconsistency. Finesse in the use of the controls is only part of the test - without the observations skills and use of the system, you will find it hard to be in the right gear, in the right position etc. It's not a test, it's a demonstration of your normal driving. I've done the advanced test with the IAM, I've also reached gold standard with the RoSPA Advanced Drivers' Association. The skills have avoided many potential accident situations. So my top tips would be: Look well ahead and use all the clues the road has to offer eg. a group of street lamps on an otherwise unlit road is a good indicator that there's a roundabout or a dangerous junction ahead. Fresh horse muck a valuable clue to there being people on horseback ahead, using reflections/shadows to good advantage. The more white paint there is, the greater the hazard ahead. Don't put your car on a stretch of road until your eyes and brain have been there first. I heard once a story of the great racing driver Fangio to was competing in a Grand Prix. As he approached the grandstand, he saw only the backs of people's heads instead of their faces and slowed down. In doing so, he avoided a massive pile-up of cars. In a normal situation he would have had that sea of faces fixated on him. Know your car and how to balance the throttle and the steering for smooth, safe cornering. Getting your speed/gear in good time means that you will actually corner slightly faster than if you brake late on the approach. Adopt a chaffeur-style of driving - imagine the examiner is holding a glass of champagne - that will encourage the smoothest of driving. Good luck!

I've got a rain-spotted roof, but that doesn't count! I've seen one Fabia at my dealers with a white roof and it did look good (rest of the car was blue). I must admit that I can't imagine it looking right on the estate, more suited to the hatch. The only styling bits I went for were mudflaps and sill protectors. The sill protectors do look good. Jo

I just wanted to update this for the benefit of others. I got my PocketDock on Tuesday. It does make a big difference to the sound from the iPod. Volume problem sorted, interestingly, volume is better on ripped cds than the one album I've downloaded from iTunes. Weird! Jo

I think it probably is bad luck. I had just one replacement windscreen in more than 13 years of driving, then had two replacement screens in six months. Unlike older cars, the modern bonded windscreen forms part of the structure of the car. You can get the tiniest stone chip and due to the stresses placed upon the glass, it can form a crack. A rapid change in temperature, going over a road hump a little fast, and the weakness caused by the chip spreads. Worse still, fail to replace a badly cracked windscreen promptly and the bodyshell can distort. The new bonded screens have done much to strengthen the modern car and make them safer for occupants in an accident, the downside is the sort of thing you've come up against here. I think we're meant to call it progress, but there are downsides too.

Well, I've been driving Vauxhalls for 17 years and my hubby has driven many different makes and models over the years both as a private motorist and as a company driver. The Fabia 3 package is as good as it gets for the money. Whoever designed the car lives in the real world and it really shows. The brilliance is in the finer details. I waited eight weeks for mine, it seemed like the longest eight weeks ever. I've had the car for 3 1/2 weeks and have enjoyed every one of the 985 miles covered to date. Your greyhound will have space to curl up and go to sleep in comfort. Actually as a dog owner, if you want to protect your investment against the rigours of the four-legged friend, you may want to look at what this company offers: Custom made Boot Buddies It's a custom made boot liner that you can specify to meet your own requirements. They include a non-slip mat option and you can have an extension that covers the rear of the back seat when the rear seats are folded. You can have it designed so that all of the boot is protected too. There's even a neat flap to protect the rear bumper. I got the rear bumper protector (dealer fit option costing £30) fitted to my estate. It looks good and does offer some much needed protection, but you may find that the boot buddy will give you a level of protection not offered by other products. I hope this helps.

The estate is a brilliant car. You will be very happy. It's all those neat little touches in the 3 that make it really brilliant. Here's my favourites list: The boot: the Fabia isn't a big car, but that boot is superb. It's a useful shape, has good access, and the side pockets and the semicircular thing to contain smaller items are very useful. The driving experience: Controls are light, precise and a joy to use. Everything is well positioned too. Check out the variable intermittent wipe, the neat spectacle holder, the brilliantly designed stereo that displays the stored station name alongside the button that selects it. The parking sensors are very useful too. Enjoy it when it arrives.

About 920 miles in three weeks. Well happy thus far.

Hmmm. I know the feeling! Storm blue with sandy spots at the moment, oh yes, and with lots of mushed flies for good measure. :(

Thankfully my Fabia retains its new car smell. No one has farted in it as far as I am aware. I certainly haven't. Sounds like some of you need a good air refresher fitted.

I'm planning to use a very good local garage unless there's some specific reason to take the car to the dealer. We happen to have an excellent independent garage within walking distance of home. When our Vauxhall dealer went into administration and closed, we tried another dealer 18 miles away, but weren't very impressed. Since then, our local garage has been doing an excellent job. The savings are significant - I had a major service, cambelt change (including a new water pump), new brake pads and a brake fluid change on my Astra for just over £500. The same work at a dealer would have been well over £600. He's happy to service my Fabia and will use Skoda parts to maintain the validity of the warranty.

These figures are from the estate comparative review that was in Auto Express dated13-19th Feb 2008 and are for the 1.4 tdi estate. 0-60/30-70mph: 12.3/13.9 secs 30-50 mph in 3rd/4th: 5.5/7.7 secs 50-70 mph in 5th: 15.8 sec I hope this is the info you wanted.

If I remember rightly, in the What Car comparison between the Fabia 1.4 tdi and the Peugeot 207SW, they quoted some times. I still have the mag somewhere I'll have a look. Jo

Yes, I did play with the volume limiter on the ipod. Thanks all for your replies, you are all brilliant! I was going to say fab, but on a Fabia forum that might be interpreted as something else!

Well, I've taken the plunge and ordered one - it sounds like the solution to my problem.

Stuart Do you have problems with the volume being very quiet? I tried my newly acquired Nano today in my Fabia estate and it wasn't very good. Does cable length matter?

Do you know what settings I need to change? The manual for the stereo is pretty thin, I had to look up how to choose the Aux in! I don't really want to pay out £100+ to get the ICE thingy. It's an awful lot to pay out just to listen to music. I'm really new to all of this. I tried plugging it into my home hifi and that was pretty quiet too. The volume needed to be a lot higher than for CDs. :(

Hi All I've just bought an iPod Nano to make use of the 3.5mm jack in my Fabia. Tried it today and found I had to turn the volume to max to hear anything at all. Sound quality was poor. Not at all what I was expecting. What on earth am I doing wrong? I got a Hama 2m cable with gold-plated connections and I'm a little disappointed. Jo :confused:

I don't think modern gadget-laden cars are capable of delivering the maximum fuel economy. Between 1994 and 1997 I owned a Vauxhall Nova 1.5 TD. That had a 67 bhp Izuzu engine and regularly topped 63-66 mpg on a mixed route of A and B roads, and over 70 mpg on longer trips. It was quick too. I'm surprised there is so much variation in the fuel consumption of the 1.4 tdi, maybe being tuned to give low emissions means that pushing it has a greater negative effect on economy. Just a thought.

Some, but not all females sit close to the wheel as a result of a lack of confidence. Others do so because they're not wearing ideal footwear. It's not all down to leg length. Some simply haven't been taught how to set their seat up properly. It doesn't help when demo cars rarely have the handbook in the car, and there won't always be enough time to go through all the details before the drive. Height-adjustable seats and reach/rake adjustable steering have become more vital since the appearance of airbags.Anyway, I do hope your friend isn't being pressured into buying a 1.2 Polo because the dealer just happens to have some in stock that they want to shift before the new model appears! I had a Ford dealer try to sell me a 1.8i Focus because they had discounted them! It does happen, even though there are plenty of honest, helpful Sales guys out there.Jo

There's a very topical article on the BBC News website regarding ladies' seating positions: BBC NEWS | Health | Women 'face raised whiplash risk' If you read the Fabia handbook, it states clearly that the driver's chest must be at least 25cm from the steering wheel. This is to give the driver's airbag room to fully deploy in an accident. Sit closer, and it won't work properly. The other vital component to safety is the head restraint. Fail to adjust that peroperly and you can suffer serious damage at impact speeds as low as 12mph. I know, it does take time to adjust everything when the driver changes over, but the consequences of not doing so can be very high indeed. Your car can be repaired/replaced, you are much more valuable.

Sorry to hear of your problems. Very short journeys are going to play havoc with your Octavia. Not just with the battery, but you'll get increased engine wear and other problems because your engine will never be getting up to temperature. I suspect your battery has waned prematurely - and the poor function of the electric windows (I assume you mean with the engine off) would suggest that things aren't happy with the battery. You can reduce the strain by keeping as many of the electrics off on your short journeys, you can also reduce the strain by declutching when you start your engine as this reduces the effort required to start the car. The best solution by far, is to give your car a good run once a week to get the engine up to temperature and boost the battery. We don't use our cars for short journeys, we tend to walk on trips of under 2 miles unless we have a heavy or bulky load to transport. Short journeys are high polluting ones, since a car's emissions when running on a richer mixture are much higher. Jo

The seats and steering on the Fabia are fully adjustable for height, reach and rake. I suspect the reason for the problem is that your friend wasn't fully aware of all the adjustments and didn't get a good seating position. Not only does the seat move forwards and backwards, it's height adjustable too. She should put the steering wheel close to the dash and adjust her seat to suit comfortable operation of the pedals, then adjust the steering and seat back in combination so that her wrist rests comfortably on top of the steering wheel, just behind the heel of the hand, her chest should be at least 25cm from the airbag. You would be amazed how few drivers take the time to properly adjust their seat. It is a cause of a lot of back pain and leg discomfort that is totally avoidable. I'm 5 feet tall and my husband is 6ft 3ins, we can both get very comfortable in my new Fabia. It's probably worth her taking another drive in a Fabia and putting some emphasis on the seating adjustment. The Fabia seats are better than some others I've sat in over the years.

I'm another petrol Fabia owner, I have a Fabia 3 estate with the 1.4 16v engine and I also did the calculations and found it would have taken too long to recover the additional cost of the diesel. I've owned two diesel cars in the past, one was perhaps one of the best cars I've owned and the other was the very worst. Diesels are popular at the moment - but looking at petrol forecourts and seeing diesel prices now 10p/litre more expensive than petrol adding to that additional up-front cost, you need to be clocking up reasonable miles to get payback in a reasonable time frame. There was an interesting article in one of the car mags recently doing a diesel v's petrol comparison. It supported my decison to stick with petrol. Today, my new Fabia, just coming up to 2 weeks old recorded its best mpg to date on my normal cross-country drive from work - 44.9 mpg. It's still improving. You will love your new Fabia - it's a very good package of features/performance.

Storm blue is a fab colour, especially when the sun catches it. I hope you'll have years of happy motoring. Enjoy the space only the Roomster can provide! Jo

Thanks guys, you've all been really helpful. Jo