I previously owned a pre facelift vrs estate with 18s and the one thing that bugged me about the car was the road noise over 70 mph.

I am contemplating purchasing a facelift and haven't managed to work out if skoda worked on this as part of the facelift and on the refinement in general. Has anyone on here owned a pre facelift and facelift rs wagon and able to comment on road noise and refinement improvements in the facelift model?

I know vw have made great efforts to improve refinement with mark vi golf and wondered whether skoda had followed suit.

Many thanks for any input.

I have a FL CR vRS, and used to have a PD vRS.

The CR engine is much quieter, but I think that the whole car is quieter as well; road noise and wind noise.

The door seals are different and this must contribute to the reduction in wind noise, not too sure what they may have done about the road noise but this car has Dunlops fitted.

Interestingly I was coming back from the tip at the weekend and had the rear sets folded down (it is a hatch) and the road noise was considerably higher. I can imagine that the estate would be noiser due to it not having a rigid parcel shelf.

I suspect a major contributor to the reduction in wind noise is the re-designed exterior mirrors.

Define "road noise". Is it engine/exhaust noise, wind roar, or tyre roar?

If it's tyre roar, then the answer is to change make of tyre (especially if you run rubbish like Dunlops just now).

It was tyre roar possibily contributed to by dunlops but a combination of those and poor sound deadening

I've a facelift estate and to me the road noise seems as bad if not sometimes worse than my pre facelift hatch. I've put some sound deadening in which has helped a bit, most the noise does appear to come from the boot. Which is to be expected, as already mentioned there's no parcel shelf to help block the sound. That combined with the rubbish road surfaces we have and low profile tyres = rather a lot of road noise.

Mind you, having had the (dis)pleasure of driving a 59plate Astra 1.4 (not the new shape) that seemed to have a lot more road noise than the octy.

The road noise on my PD estate has been greatly reduced by laying 'sound proofing' backed carpet (£20 from Ebay) under the estate boot mat & underneath the back seat base. The soundproofing under the rear seat base made the biggest difference, to my ears anyway.

The road noise on my PD estate has been greatly reduced by laying 'sound proofing' backed carpet (£20 from Ebay) under the estate boot mat & underneath the back seat base. The soundproofing under the rear seat base made the biggest difference, to my ears anyway.

Could you let me know how easy this is to fit? What is involved in getting acces to these two places? I've got the variable boot floor.