Not all Cruise controls are created equal......my alhambra CC is great and I use it all the time, very good at taking the stress out of motoring.

On my (former and glad its gone) 57 Corsa 1.3Cdti,:rotz: it was TERRIBLE. Badly thought out, the software controlling it terrible. Just two examples of many things wrong. You have to twist (how stupid is that?) the end of the stalk to engage it, sometimes it would ignore you and whyen it worked it took at least 2 seconds to engage. If you want to indicate and increase the speed at the same time - forget it - 2 functions at once NOT PERMITTED!!.

And no foot rest on the left (How did I miss that one?)

Sorry to be a dissenting voice, but hate CC in the UK. You're not fully in control of the car or responding sensitively to the traffic flow and it's fairly brutal in the way it maintains speed - can't believe it improves economy.

I sometimes wonder on the motorway whether the people who rush at you from behind at times and them fall right back are on CC - or maybe their moblie 'phone...

John - From the person on cruise control's frame of reference, the people randomly speeding up and slowing down for no reason are the annoyance.

I had cruise on my previous vehicle, a VW Touran, and I found that fuel economy was actually worse when using it.

Don't have it on my current car, and I don't overly miss it, possibly because I'm not doing huge mileages, but also because the DSG is so relaxing to drive.

Well for me its a no brainer, i would not be without it plus in my opinion if every vehicle had on we would have more mpg and keep up a resonable speed, for instance on my journey i select a given speed and as its also dsg i find that the person in front often has a "tired"foot and slows down then picks up and so on, now if that person had CC we would all be going nicely.

Cruise is an absolute God send... set it, forget it

You're allowed to set it higher than 50 on NSL single carriageways though Simbo

Well, I've ordered it now (at £195, sorry!), getting fitted week Sat.

I'm not really getting it for improved fuel economy, but if it manages just 1mpg better than me, it'll pay for itself eventually, which is nice. Not many of my toys do that

One question though that someone might be able to answer; my wife's Leon's CC has a "cancel" feature on the top of the stalk. Some photos I see of the Octavia's stalk with CC show this feature, some don't. Is this just a matter of a running update, i.e. do all stalks sold now have the "cancel" feature? I do want this, because I want to be able to cancel CC without having to turn CC off completely (so I can quickly RESUME), or by pressing the brake/clutch!

ALL Skoda CC stalks have this. They just didn't have it printed on them. You lightly touch it and it cancels CC, if you push the switch all the way past 50% of travel, it clicks off and disables cruise all together.

I think it has to be said that its rare you can have CC set at the same speed for very long, because no-one travels at the same speed as you!

I think it has to be said that its rare you can have CC set at the same speed for very long, because no-one travels at the same speed as you!

This is true, however with cruise you can vary the speed up/down using the controls at the end of the stalk by approx 1mph per press of + or -, when using cruise I use this to adjust my speed to match the traffic flow. You dont need to unset and reset at a different speed.

I let the car coast to drop speed quite a lot. Its especially handy for entering slower speed limit areas. From cruise at 100km/h move the switch to about the mid way point and let it spring back. The cruise control is no longer active even though the switch is in the on position (You get to the same state by pressing any of the pedals).

I then let the car coast to the speed I want and then hit the '-' button to hold the new speed or drive at the lower speed on the accelerator (Especially important if its a built up area) and hit the '+' button to accelerate back to the original speed after the reduced speed limit has ended.

Me too psycho - that's the way to use it.

£195 is TOO expensive. I bought the stalk from Skoda for £65 and fitted it myself; took two hours. Send me your email address and I'll send you a copy of the installation guide I've written. CC is great but somebody is making a killing here!

When you factor in that my local garage charges about €90 an hour for labour, £195 for a 2 hour job requiring a £65 part is about right...

£195 is TOO expensive. I bought the stalk from Skoda for £65 and fitted it myself; took two hours. Send me your email address and I'll send you a copy of the installation guide I've written. CC is great but somebody is making a killing here!

I think I've already had your guide thanks, if you're the same person (and very good it was too!).

I considered this option, but figured that I'd have to buy VAG-COM and the other tool in your guide. I do intend buying VAG-COM eventually, so it could be argued that I'd have spent around £325ish and got VAG-COM too, but there are other considerations...

Such as, my car is only 15 months old, and whilst I am fairly confident of my abilities when it comes to pulling things to bits and putting them back together, I didn't want to do anything that might jeapardise a future warranty claim, or give Skoda an excuse to get out of one.

Also, what with one thing or another, I'm quite busy at the moment (well, actually that's not really true, but I've got a massive backlog of recorded Panoramas and Dispatches and other such serious telly to watch, and I'm trying to learn French ), so I don't mind paying to have this item installed. I admit, £130 is quite a lot for a couple of hour's work (probably less for them), but I'll have piece of mind I guess.

If the car was 3 years old (i.e. out of warranty), I wouldn't have thought twice about doing it myself...

Fair enough. What really annoyed me is that the extra two buttons and slide switch at the end of the stalk probably costs Skoda less than 50p in the factory. Everything else is already there!

Fair enough. What really annoyed me is that the extra two buttons and slide switch at the end of the stalk probably costs Skoda less than 50p in the factory. Everything else is already there!

I know what you mean, but with things like this it's not always the absolute material value that you are paying for.

Sure, Skoda could have fitted every Octy with the CC stalk (let's say for arguement's sake it costs 50p more to do so) and enabled CC (free). But then they've got no product differentiation. Who's going to pay more for an Elegance because they want CC when the Classic has it? (for example)

Things like this go on all the time. I've known identical products (in terms of hardware) actually have features disabled (by an EEPROM setting) that they are actually capable of supporting.

EDIT: It's also worth bearing in mind how much money 50p * 25,000 (for example) is in real terms! Engineering depts often go to great lengths to shave pennies off the cost of building things, because when you build 1000's of something, it means a lot of money!!

I know what you mean, but with things like this it's not always the absolute material value that you are paying for.

Sure, Skoda could have fitted every Octy with the CC stalk (let's say for arguement's sake it costs 50p more to do so) and enabled CC (free). But then they've got no product differentiation. Who's going to pay more for an Elegance because they want CC when the Classic has it? (for example)

Exactly - it's set at a price where they believe they will make most money, just like most specification upgrades.

Look at engines as well.

There can be quite substantial price differences when you buy them but very little extra in the cost to manufacture.

According to the latest Octavia brochure

http://www.skoda.co.uk/pdf/brochure_octavia.pdf

page 14 - cost as factory fit option is £185 so £195 as a dealer after-fit is pretty reasonable

It also has a photo of the stalk.

One thing that pi$$e$ me off on my 06 Elegance CC is the lack of warning light to show it is activated - there is a blank tell-tale in the dash but it doesn't light up! Apparently only activated from 07 model onwards so I wonder how your after-fit will be.

According to the latest Octavia brochure

http://www.skoda.co.uk/pdf/brochure_octavia.pdf

page 14 - cost as factory fit option is £185 so £195 as a dealer after-fit is pretty reasonable

It also has a photo of the stalk.

One thing that pi$$e$ me off on my 06 Elegance CC is the lack of warning light to show it is activated - there is a blank tell-tale in the dash but it doesn't light up! Apparently only activated from 07 model onwards so I wonder how your after-fit will be.

I did notice this actually. Must mean they have to go through the same process at the factory as at the dealership, i.e. it's not built in during the main build, as it would be with a model having it by default.

I'll keep an eye out for the indicator!

Exactly - it's set at a price where they believe they will make most money, just like most specification upgrades.

Look at engines as well.

There can be quite substantial price differences when you buy them but very little extra in the cost to manufacture.

Right again. I very much doubt the 2.0TDi costs in the region of £1.5k more to build than the 1.9TDi. It might do, but I doubt it. You're paying a big chunk for the desirability and the R&D!

One thing that pi$$e$ me off on my 06 Elegance CC is the lack of warning light to show it is activated - there is a blank tell-tale in the dash but it doesn't light up! Apparently only activated from 07 model onwards so I wonder how your after-fit will be.

I can now confirm that the indicator does indeed work on my car

It's a March 2008 car ('08).

Hi there, picking this up late but would like to retro fit CC to my Wife's car. I have it on my Audi and it's all included on the indicator stalk which is very similar to the Skoda one, with a few buttons missing. Do they modify the existing Skoda indicator stalk or is it a whole new stalk. Not sure I want another stalk on the column.

Thanks

Its a replacement stalk, you get a new indicator stalk with the buttons on.

We would be able to supply and fit for £160.