Hi All,

Wife went to the garden centre the other day, bought a few bags of slate. Upon arriving at home and navigating up our (but in the grand scheme of things not that) steep driveway heard a scrape like it had grounded out either at the front or rear.

I did the typical "how did you manage that!" when she told me so went out to inspect it. Turns out the tips of the exhaust tailpipes had caught the pavement on the way up! Fortunately theres no real damage and you cant see the scratches but my fear was if the car was laidened any heavier (after all it was just a few bags of slate, quite heavy but nothing out of the ordinary (and certainly not testing the boot capacity) it could have been pretty.

I guess the combination of fairly lengthy suspension travel plus a lack of self levelling (not that i'd expect a car like this to have that) compromise it a little as a load lugger so be warned!

Slate is heavier than most people think. I work in a tile warehouse and put 60x40 slate into a Peugeot. It only had about 10 pieces and it was on the deck. I advised the customer to do several trips whcih they did. Some cars seem better than others but it's not dependent on size. Audi's are about the worst since most are pretty low anyway

aye this is true..... my ol peugeot with saggy torsion beam suspension couldn't even take two rear passengers without bottoming out on bumps etc etc>>>>!!!!

my dads merc managed a whopping(probably slightly illegal) 420kgs of cement and bricks on the back seat and boot of his E class mercedes(saloon), and a unmeasured amount in the footwells.

i came with him to the build centre and my little felly hatchback on standard suspension took about 120kgs of cement in the boot, and about another 200kgs evenly distributed in the footwells and front seat and there was very little travel left on the back suspension!!!

mind you considering i weigh 95kgs and my four best mates total 300kgs between them i guess it's not that different to carrying full group of peeps.

but thanks for the warning... i will be careful not to overload my vRS estate(when i get one ;-) )

Edited 12 September, 201114 yr by Sonner

try to add up how much the slate weighed, then check the max weight the car is allowed, this is often much less than people realise! you can overload the limits of a normal hatch just with 5 large people in it!

There's more; come here. Lots of modernish Skodas, particularly so with the estates, have long rear overhangs, which in turn means that they have low rear ramp angles.

There's more; come here. Lots of modernish Skodas, particularly so with the estates, have long rear overhangs, which in turn means that they have low rear ramp angles.

true, true..

I don't understand why the Estate is taller than the hatch by 2cm??

Makes perfect sense guys. Funny though as its ground clearance is quite good normally. Still better than giving the front bumper a damn good scraping!

It's amazing how many people overload estate cars.

They have a lot of volume space but not a great deal of weight capacity.

I don't understand why the Estate is taller than the hatch by 2cm??

Because the Estate has roof rails?

I think as well as having quite a long overhang the exhaust pipes themselves are quite exposed on the vRS estate. I doubt a normal Fabia estate would have made contact like ours did.