"Well yesterday afternoon I had a decently long drive of a Yeti 1.2Tsi. I (and the Fuhrer) had already had a prolonged poke around of a captive Yeti – an SE model in the showroom, and we very much liked what we saw. We did however see rather a lot! I did not expect it to be quite so big having never seen one on the road. Considering it’s supposed to be based on the Golf they seem to have welded in a fair few planks to make it longer.
This of course gave rise to a bit of an issue. My current steed has 250bhp a slippery diff, flappy paddles and FWD. Road tests suggested that good though they were it was not the Diesels or 1.8 Tsi models that were the pick of the range but the teensy 1.2 Tsi! I certainly had reservations about just how well 105bhp could fling around something weighing 1300kg or so, anyway with some scepticism I climbed in and fired it up – and nothing. There was a distant whirr and that was it the idle was utterly silent, Salesman ‘Gary’ a very nice chap indeed, sat there grinning as he had obviously seen this reaction before. This was refinement of a class I have never experienced. A very well isolated engine if nothing else.
Anyway, the test route involved the delightful area around Strangeways nick and very testing it was to, ranging from Belgian ‘Pave’ to Corrie cobbles and Columbian dirt track and some potholes that would give speliologists food for thought. The ride was firm but compliant, no heeling over like something out of Horatio Hornblower – something I was a tad worried about because of the genre. Holes ruts and general scabiness was treated with contempt, in short I liked the ride. Steering was feelsome (great steering wheel) nicely weighted with more feedback than I anticipated, no slack dead centre, in fact pretty damned accomplished.
And now the best bit. This thing flies! Not literally - but this gem of a 1.2 seems to develop all of it’s 175nm at bugger all revs. In fact my jaw actually dropped when I gave it some welly for the first time. You can hear the thing then of course but it’s a very smooth refined engine when extended, no harshness at all just revved to the red line in a very hungry manner indeed. I would imagine the 0 to 30 time to be very good, in fact if you had told me it was a state of the art 1.6 I would have nodded sagely and pronounced it mighty fine. As regards the engine I spent the rest of the test in a state of bemusement, wondering how this would perform on the motorway and how it would manage fully loaded. Gary uses this as his family car although his boss had just bought it for his wife and he stated that a motorway cruise of 85 is easily maintainable with perhaps a drop down from 6th to 5th only required for severe gradients. The excellent and most comprehensive trip computer was showing a 37mpg average, not bad as Gary’s commute was totally urban and only 8 miles long. Motorway trips and fast A roads easily saw high 40’s according to Gary. Brakes, strong and easily modulated – white van man gave them a thorough work out at one point, certainly no issues there. Gearbox – a six speed, was slick, easily the best I have experienced in a VW. Some reports have mentioned it being notchy, not that I could find. I did stall it once – the curse of the redundant left foot of the flappy paddleist… . View of the road was commanding and a feature which delighted the Fuhrer was the height adjust on the passenger seat as well as drivers. Rear view as good as could be expected but the excellent reverse assist sonar which pops up on the huge radio screen sorts that out. Once you are within ‘don’t go any further’ range a red line appears behind the graphic, the distance left is sufficient to walk between car and object. Very neat. The sound system was also impressive, not that I do much listening in the car but it even accepted SD cards as well as displaying all text messages for Bluetoothed phones.
I came away far more impressed than I thought I would be, the sheer go the refinement the engaging handling (obviously understeer and what have you not explored in this test route) and the achievement VW have made in this little Tsi motor has given me much food for thought. In fact I have decided, providing my current car sells for it’s £11.5k asking price then a Metallic Amazonian green 1.2Tsi Elegance with Gobi sand leather and an internal bike rack and more toys than Hamleys WILL be mine.
Nice one Skoda."
