I'm not about to chop in the old bus just yet, but if I did.........

SWMBO wants to get a Fabia TDI vRS next time, meaning I'd have to get something a bit bigger to get all of us in. So.........

Choices-

Octavia 4x4 TDI estate

Octavia TDI L&K estate

Octavia TDI vRS estate

Volvo V70 TDI estate (with AWD?)

Economy followed by comfort followed by performance are the primary criteria. We do seem to get a fair bit of snow and ice up here (3 winters out of 3 so far since I moved here!) so 4x4 might be nice but I've coped ok with the Octy on ordinary tyres, so I'm thinking a set of winter boots for whatever I get will be better than 4wd all year round, dragging the economy down.

I really like the V70 but an 08 V70 2.4D with 60k on it is still £13K

I love the leather in my L&K currently and don't think I'd really like to go back to cloth seats, so I reckon my best choice would be the Octy L&K estate, remapped to something a bit closer to the vRS?

Opinions?

Hmmm if I could go back 4yr I'd have got a scout rather than the VRS.

So out of your choices I think I'd probably go for the 4x4 if the spec was reasonable.

V70 is very expensive imho

My mate in Scarborough has an Octavia 4x4 estate (pre facelift). It's quite dull & slow but has been faultless since new. His wife seems to be doing her best to knock bits off it on posts & the garage door, but that's not the car's fault. It coped well off road as he used to be in search and rescue and volunteer as a medic on the Trackrod Rally in Dalby forest. It did very well on rutted tracks and in mud, keeping up with other 4x4 machinery.

The boot is massive and he gets about 45mpg average.

Hope this is of some use.