It will be interesting to see how Skoda market the new Octavia in the UK.

I've just bought one of the last Mk II 1.6 diesels for £15K or so, down from around £17K ish. The dealer tells me that the same sort of Mk III car will cost £20K or so.

Now, all of us on this forum know how good Skodas are, but what about non-Skoda drivers who only know all the jokes about skips, etc.? How will you get them to part with £20,000 - which, as an amount of money, is a huge psychological step up from the normal price for this car?

My guess is that Skoda will have to play a bit dirty and shout from the rooftops that you will get benefits A,B,C,D,E,F,G, and H from the Skoda while other makes will only offer you A, B, and C for your bucks.

Will they? We shall see. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my Mk II and look forward to the prospect of benefitting from price discounting when I buy my first Mk III in 2015!

They'll artificially inflate the RRP then offer some kind of incentive to attract a few folk, then they'll do what they did with the units last year - oops we can't meet demand so lead times are into 2020 so your trade in will be worth sweet FA!

Notice when demand is high the lead times are great so supply is poor and when they wan to get shut of a load of units, i.e. now the MkII Octy, there's a glut!

Call me cynical.