After someone kindly dinging my mk1 Fabia VRS last night/this morning I thought i'd have a nose around the local Skoda dealer to see if they'd had their VRS demonstraor in yet.

Oh yes they have!

Luckily it's in Red so i could make direct comparisons between the way it looks and my own Corrida red mk1

First impressions are that it's still a bit "cute"

Even my other half said that it looked like a "girls car" and that it seemed to be trying to "take on Mini rather than something more aggresive."

I'm on the fence. The VRS is a huge inprovement on the overly rounded and bubbley standard Fabia but i have to agree it's still a bit cute.

To quote my other half again "if you saw it in your rear view mirror you'd think "Awww" rather than "Jesus I better get out of the way""

It was when we arrived locked up in a showroom so i asked for he keys to have a poke around inside and then pushed them harder to let me take it for a spin.

After some light persuasion they caves and offered me "a quick few miles down the road" - WAHEY! :yes:

I think the interior is a big step on from the mk1.

The light grey seats are gone (THANK GOD!) and everything looks and feels more expensive inside (as you'd expect). The DSG knob is an odd thing to look at but serves it's purpose well. Flappy paddles may not be everyones cup of tea (and made me instantly think of my xbox steering wheel) but they again do their job although i found they may not be quite long enough :S

Test drive route was a short 40mph limited village and then a couple of stretches of dual carriage way punctuated by roundabouts and the sales guy accompanied as he "wanted to make sure i did the right thing with the DSG 'box and didn;t stamp on the brake like it was the clutch" the car also only had 57 miles on the clock so i think he wanted to make sure i didn't rag the absolute ****** off it!

So how does she go... well...impressively would be my one word review although not for the reasons you may think.

I'll admit that this is the first petrol i have driven in about 8 years (other than a quick test drive in a Clio 182 3 years ago) but i think i love turbo diesel torque too much!!

While i found that the power and accelaration were there, revving and revving seems an awful lot of fuss

To quote the other half "the engine was making so much noise I thought it going to come out through the bonnet" How spoilt we are by 300 diesel torques!

That said the silence on tick over, and while pootling along, was a joy to behold - I wonder if a CR diesel might be the answer?!

Most impressive thing by a million miles was the DSG. Yes it was my first experience of the super clever box but it really is amazing. Shuffling cogs silently and unnoticably through the village (i was doing 40 in 6th with next to no revs before i realised) and then letting the engine spin up when accelarating (even in full auto) and allowing speedy paddle shifts when in sport.

To sum up my few short miles - i'm wholey impressed and pleased by the new Fabia VRS and I guess the fact i wanted more time and a few corners must be a good sign.

I can't help thinking though that if they follow suit, do as SEAT have done, and put a CR engine in the nose (which the sales guy thought was a strong possibility) i'll be much more willing to part with my cash . As it stands, if i had to part with my mk1 Fabia tomorrow i'd be going out and looking for another newer fresher example (or an Ibiza FR/Cupra) to replace it with and be happy to pocket the extra £10k!

girls know they're stuff

mines quite simply said.... ewww thats horrible looks like a microwave

i test drove one a few weeks back, took the misses and she said it looks like a mini and now as nice is the mk 1, but the gearbox is mind blowing i want one in my mk1

I took one out today from Horton's in Lincoln and it drives great and the gearbox is amazing and definately something that would make me think long and hard about swapping my Mk1 VRS for only thing it missed was the torque, it handled really nicely a lot less body roll than the Mk1's and it had a very fruity exhaust note but as it was all to tempting to keep putting my foot down i'm guessing the mpg would be ****e compared to my Mk1 not sure what colour i'd have though...

Our demo is in blue (race blue at a guess?) looks pretty nice. But no where near as nice as mine..lol