Hi all,

This is my first post and just thought I’d share my buying experience (I got the car 6 weeks ago) and my recent drive to Lake Garda in Italy and back.

I purchased a Silver VRS diesel estate on a 07 plate with the 18” wheels, air-con, jumbo box, and cruise control extras. I live in Cornwall but whilst my three ‘local’ Skoda dealers (two franchised and one independent) promised the earth within my budget they failed to deliver. After scouring the approved used skoda site Mitchell Skoda near Ellesmere Port offered me an unbeatable price and agreed to take my p/x Renault Megane (100k+ on the clock) without seeing it. Mitchell Skoda were excellent throughout, made the process hassle free, seemed to work on an understanding of trust and even gave me a free Skoda t-shirt when I arrived to pick up the car as their furthest ever customer!

After two weeks of ownership my first impressions of the car were good and I embarked with the other half on an 18 night trip down to Lake Garda in Italy and back taking in Annecy on the way down and Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg on the way back up. The car managed 47.2 mpg over the 2,850 miles and coped admirably with everything thrown at it. A competent cruiser (I was glad it had the cruise control!) the boot swallowed all our stuff (inc. all the girlfriends clothes – no mean feat!) and excelled on the tricky mountain passes between Italy and Switzerland. The Gotthard Pass was particularly impressive and I would recommend the driving in that region to any enthusiast. I took in a bit of the derestricted autobahn and cruised for a while at 100mph but the busy traffic stopped any top speed runs – the VRS felt very solid throughout. We saw no foreign VRS’s on our entire journey except for in Luxembourg where we saw about 15 in three days – the Luxembourg dealer is obviously very competent!!

So, 6 weeks in and thoroughly impressed. 10k and my p/x (worth about 2k) for an 07 plate with 11k miles feels like a bargain so far and the whole Skoda experience, from the buying of it to the helpful attitude of Skoda UK (I e-mailed a few questions and got immediate responses) to the customer care from Mitchell Skoda, has left me feeling satisfied. The car continues to have a feel good factor and impresses colleagues and friends alike who would previously have discounted it for ‘being a skoda’! Hopefully the car and Skoda dealers will continue to impress.

Finally, I know no post is complete without a few pictures so please see the following photobucket links (trying to upload the pictures normally kept crashing the site!)

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/dc66_2009/DSC01655.jpg

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/dc66_2009/DSC01971.jpg

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/dc66_2009/DSC01977.jpg

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/dc66_2009/DSC02160.jpg

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/dc66_2009/DSC02255.jpg

Cheers,

David.

Doing a similar trip in July in our MX5. Zebrugge-Champagne(Troyes)-Annecy-Leysin-Bern(both Swiss)-Forbach,Black Forest-Bastogne(Belg/Lux Border)- Bruges.

Not same luggage room as you so not so many goodies to bring back, but can't wait.

Glad you enjoyed it:thumbup:

Just done 4k in two weeks in mine on a trip from Lancashire to Bordeaux via Dover to Boulogne. Never missed a beat and that boot does hold an awful lot of the red stuff.

Don't go near IML in Plymouth for a service, they want an arm and a leg and more, a bloody rip off

as I found out last year when I had mine serviced down there over £600, the same service at the dealers in Edinburgh £210

That's got me in the mood for another Euro road trip. Welcome to the forum and nice car btw.

Great pics, nice car, good write-up and not sinlge moan about the car! Impressive. And welcome to the forum.

How refreshing - what a great first post.

We're so used to people only joining when they have a problem.

One little tip - if you use the photobucket IMG tags your pics will display in the thread instead of being a link. Its the ones that have at the end (but without the spaces I've shown here).

So you get...

nice pics - thanks.

Wow, some of those pix are awe-inspiring! Any chance you could label the location of those taken looking down on the mountain pass? I've just got to go there myself.

But what happened to the Italian sunshine?

PS: Must have taken you hours to respray the VRS in white and decalise it! Were you trying to avoid someone you didn't want to meet?

Hi David,

2 weeks ago I was driving on those suisse roads on my VRS TDI PD.

What a pity, perhaps we might have met. Honestly I sometimes feel a bit alone, in that I really seldom happen to recognize a VRS on Italian roads, and was enthusiastic to find a race blue hatch (petrol sounding) on german roads

Ciao,