Yeah - on a practical basis, I join in with the Dr Pepper's big-car, Octavia club's band!!

The Octy is a sort of middle size, it only has the wheelbase and track of a small family car like the Golf/Astra/Focus but Skoda fit an extended body which mainly gives a much larger boot than the small family class cars.

The newer large family cars are vast though, the Mondeo is nearly as big as the old 5 Series, the longer wheelbase gives it more interior space than the Octy although the boot is a similar size.

Just for comparison.

New Golf- Length 4204, width 1759

New Octy-Length 4572, width 1769 (Most of the length increase is boot space)

Mondeo - Length 4731, Width 1812

Cheers

Lee

I expect you can probably park an original Mini in the back of the latest Octy...

Reminds me of the Brockbank cartoon of 1959 when the Mini had just been announce. It showed a Rolls Royce salesman beside a Roller with a Mini in the boot. The caption was along the lines of "Instead of the speare wheel ...."

I'd have said "Oct ay via" too.

BTW does anyone know what's the official pronunciation of "Fabia"?

Is it "Fay bee a"' date=' "Fab ee a", "Faaaaarb ee a", or something else?[/quote']

It's fuuh-be-ya (Fabia) and octah-vee-ya (Octavia).

I agree that the wheelbase/platform argument is b*ll*cks. That's a purely technical outlook instead of a practical real-life one. It's the exterior and interior dimensions that should count.

Either way, the Octavia is either a very cheap family car or an extremely roomy small family car. It can't lose...

I read somewhere that the current Polo (and presumably therefore the Fabia) is bigger than the Mk1 Golf.

My Furby parks next to a Mk3 Golf every night. There's only an inch or so in it, what with the bigger bumpers on the vRS. The bonnet on my Furby's shorter than on the Golf, so I reckon my car is at least as roomy on the inside...

Interestingly What Car only recently rated the 2L diesel Octy ahead of the winner of large family car caegory (the Avensis).

In this review the Octy was competing against diesel versions of the 407, Mondeo and Passat and it beat the lot.

Confused ?

The old octavia did sit in between Focus and Mondeo sized cars.

The new one is very much closer in size to "large family car" status and is going to be seen by buyers as being in that segment.

Both versions of the Octy are closer to being a family car. I doubt that anyone who has not read that the Octavia is based on the Golf platform would look at it and compare it with Golf/Focus/Astra etc. Was parked along side the last version of the Vectra the other day, my Mk1 Octy was every bit as big, and yet I have never heard anyone argue that the Vectra is anything other than a Family sized car.