I have a late 2001 octavia 4X4 which continues to serve me well, especially skiing in the alps, and I try to keep it in top condition with the help of our local independent VAG garage. The front tyres were nearing the end of their lives, and in my most recent visual check I saw that they were seriously worn on the inner shoulders and needed immediate replacement. This was my fault really - the outer shoulders had always worn before, and I had had the tyres reversed on the rims at the front to even up the wear. In September 2011 I had a Beissbarth wheel alignment carried out to try to even things up a bit, and still have the before and after data sheet from that time. I should have paid more attention to the full width since then!! I would note that this alignment eliminated a tendency of the car to fish-tail in really slippery snow when not braking or accellerating and I have some confidence in it.

So I found a local tyre fit specialist who can supply the all season winter rated tyres that have served me well, and got them to do the work. They phoned me up to say I could pick it up when they completed the wheel alignment which I had specifically said I did not want (my normal garage was lined up to do it.) They said they had to, because the nearside front toed our 5 degrees, offside out one and a half, so totaling 6 1/2 degrees total toe out. Frankly, I do not believe them, the car was handling fine and had achieved over 40 mpg on a trip down the M1 two days earlier. They did assure me that they had checked the suspension in case there had been some recent catastrophic failure, and found nothing other than replacement lower arms, which shows they had checked because that happened with the previous alignment! So, is it even possible to drive a car with so much toe out? Or is that a reasonable explanation for the tyre wear when the car had done twelve and a half thousand of miles since the previous and presumably honest alignment?

Oh, you can drive it OK. But toe-out will kill the inner shoulders of the tyres.

Like you I have had bad experiences with bad wheel alignments. It is often shops with alignment gear far out of spec which is the problem, they put on a good car and it shows as being wrong.

My experiences with my vehicles (not skoda) is that 2mm or more of toe-in and the vehicle gets twitchy and tries to drive to either side rather than straight ahead. This is noticably different to the toe-out feeling of swimming from one side of the road to the other.

6 degrees would be impossible in a car that drove well and returns good fuel economy.