Redundancy has forced the return of my company leased L&K 2.0TD DSG estate. I was obviously so impressed by Octavias that I have bought myself a 2001 Elegance 1.9TDi (110) estate with 113,000 miles on it.

First impressions (apart from the appalling smell of polish that second hand car dealers insist on putting on everything including the steering wheel) is the economy. I can easily get over 50mpg, driving home carefully on the day of purchase it indicated over 60mpg on the M3 at 70mph. The L&K averaged 42mpg over the 26,000 miles I dove it from new. Like many others,mine suffered from terrible economy, at best on a long motorway run it would reach 45mpg and never any more.

The Elegance with only 110BHP is supprisingly faster than the 140BHP of the L&K because I was always feathering the throttle on that to try to get the mpg up. I can now drive faster and still get good mpg. To those of you you said It was my driving that caused poor mpg I think the easy 50+ mpg on the older car shows that it is indeed a fault with (many of) the new 140BHP engines, you only have to read the posts on this forum to see this.

I'll miss the nice heated electric seats and DGS gearbox of the L&K but not the useless auto wipers and illogical auto headlights.

I'll now be found on the Octavia I forum, bye !

Don't be surprised if the mpg gets better as you get used to it.

I struggled to get my similar (01 Elegance on variable servicing) spec old car below 60mpg, the 110 is IMO the one to choose for economy combined with decent power.