I bought my Superb from DM Keith in York back in August 2012, with just 16 miles on it.

I've had it a little over six months now, and have just clocked up 18500 miles. Time for a brief review.

Economy.

Average economy overall is around the 47mpg mark. My regular journey to work is around this area, although on longer journeys I have regularly achieved over 50 mpg. I think the best I got was about 57mpg. Surprisingly the economy does not seem to have improved as the engine was run in.

Reliability

I have had no problems with reliability whatsoever. It's started first time every time and has never let me down. The Columbus has had a few "funny five minutes" episodes where it has done something a little unexpected but it has (so far) always recovered from that.

General

Tyre wear has been a little heavier than expected. The fronts are about ready for replacement which was similar to what I found with my old Octavia, maybe a little more miles were squeezed out of the Octavia. The real surprise has been the rears. I did at least 60k miles on a set of rear tyres on the Octavia, whereas I reckon there's only about 5000 miles left in the rears on the Superb.

The dealer experience has not been great. The car was changed from its default long life service plan to fixed mileage, despite my requests for this not to happen, and assurances that it was set to long life. I asked for some minor rattles to be fixed at my first service. The rattles were fixed but at the expense of some bits of trim which were damaged and/or not reinstalled correctly. It took a further two visits to the dealer to get this sorted.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the car. It coped with the snow very well although I think I will be happier with winter tyres next year. It is very comfortable on long drives and there is more room in the cabin than almost any other car on the market.

If anyone is thinking of buying one, and has a question I haven't answered here, please let me know.

Martin

How are you finding the Columbus generally? I'm test driving a Superb Elegance tomorrow. My current car (Renault Laguna) has a built in Tom Tom and I'm hoping that the Columbus is equally as good, although I believe that there are no safety camera warnings with the Columbus?

What type of journeys do you do to work? mine consists of 12 miles on A and B roads fastest of which is 60mph, I do no motorway mileage at all except when towing our caravan, so I an average of 38 - 40mpg, about 480 miles to a tank, mine is a 58 with 77k on it.

Cheers

How are you finding the Columbus generally? I'm test driving a Superb Elegance tomorrow. My current car (Renault Laguna) has a built in Tom Tom and I'm hoping that the Columbus is equally as good, although I believe that there are no safety camera warnings with the Columbus?

Generally very good. Voice control can be a bit variable, and touchscreen sometimes does not respond.

I love having all of my music available all in one place though.

I'm afraid you're right though ..... No safety camera reminders.

Edited 20 March, 201313 yr by 2SkodaFamily

What type of journeys do you do to work? mine consists of 12 miles on A and B roads fastest of which is 60mph, I do no motorway mileage at all except when towing our caravan, so I an average of 38 - 40mpg, about 480 miles to a tank, mine is a 58 with 77k on it.

Cheers

My morning commute is 20 miles each way of mostly B roads with a bit of A road at the end. There's very little standing traffic, but on the other hand a fair bit of overtaking slow lorries, vans and tractors.

The rest of my journeys are motorways up and down which I take quite gently. Cruise set to 65-70 usually gives around 50 mpg.

How are you finding the Columbus generally? I'm test driving a Superb Elegance tomorrow. My current car (Renault Laguna) has a built in Tom Tom and I'm hoping that the Columbus is equally as good, although I believe that there are no safety camera warnings with the Columbus?

I run the Columbus alongside a TomTom GO 750 Live on a fixed cradle on a Brodit bracket. The main reason for keeping the TomTom is for HD traffic - the RDS-TMC that the Columbus uses is OK for major incidents on A roads and motorways but driving into city centres and local roads HD traffic wins hands down, when you compare the two side-by-side in real-time. On long journeys my Columbus sits on a fullscreen map at a scale of 2 miles and it serves as a quick guide to journey progress and upcoming rest areas, petrol stations, etc

Columbus pros:

Rerouting is much quicker (though I believe the newer TomTom 1000 series are quicker than the 750)

Navigation arrows appear on the MFD

In-built POI database is more comprehensive, quicker and easier to search.

TomTom pros

User interface much quicker and (I believe) more intuitive

Google search (but slow the return results)

HD traffic

Automatic safety camera updates.

Easier to turn voice guidance on and off/adjust the volume.

You can add safety camera alerts to the Columbus but adding an audible alert is more complex.

Finally, the Columbus won't hold a route if you stop for more than about 10 minutes - it resets.

You can add safety camera alerts to the Columbus but adding an audible alert is more complex.

What do you mean by "more complex"? If you have added audible warnings to Columbus maps, please tell us how you achieved it.

Ray

What do you mean by "more complex"? If you have added audible warnings to Columbus maps, please tell us how you achieved it.

Ray

Sorry, but I didn't achieve this. When researching v9 maps on another forum, several people claimed they had found a workaround by inserting an audio file alongside the POI data (hence the potential complexity), even providing links to audio files. Until now, I didn't have a reason to challenge the claim due to having no need for them, however I'm guessing from your reaction that it may be impossibly complex.

I suspect that it is extremely complex, artichoke273 - and may not even be worth the effort - hence my question to you. I wonder if you would be kind enough to PM me the other forum/links so that I can have a look myself and see if I can get anywhere? If I do, I'll share the results on this forum.

Ray

I bought my Superb from DM Keith in York back in August 2012, with just 16 miles on it.

I've had it a little over six months now, and have just clocked up 18500 miles. Time for a brief review.

Economy.

Average economy overall is around the 47mpg mark. My regular journey to work is around this area, although on longer journeys I have regularly achieved over 50 mpg. I think the best I got was about 57mpg. Surprisingly the economy does not seem to have improved as the engine was run in.

Reliability

I have had no problems with reliability whatsoever. It's started first time every time and has never let me down. The Columbus has had a few "funny five minutes" episodes where it has done something a little unexpected but it has (so far) always recovered from that.

General

Tyre wear has been a little heavier than expected. The fronts are about ready for replacement which was similar to what I found with my old Octavia, maybe a little more miles were squeezed out of the Octavia. The real surprise has been the rears. I did at least 60k miles on a set of rear tyres on the Octavia, whereas I reckon there's only about 5000 miles left in the rears on the Superb.

The dealer experience has not been great. The car was changed from its default long life service plan to fixed mileage, despite my requests for this not to happen, and assurances that it was set to long life. I asked for some minor rattles to be fixed at my first service. The rattles were fixed but at the expense of some bits of trim which were damaged and/or not reinstalled correctly. It took a further two visits to the dealer to get this sorted.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the car. It coped with the snow very well although I think I will be happier with winter tyres next year. It is very comfortable on long drives and there is more room in the cabin than almost any other car on the market.

If anyone is thinking of buying one, and has a question I haven't answered here, please let me know.

Martin

I've the same car and I've never got anything close to 47MPG over the 100,000km I've had the car.

My consumption is approx 7l/100km which equates to 40mpg.

Edited 21 March, 201313 yr by Supeeeeerb

I guess it depends on the roads used. I do a lot of motorway miles?

Normal driving, my 170 4x4 estate (2010) averages around 40-41MPG. - On a run at 70ish it'll hit mid 40's and at 55-60mph (yawn!) it'll return around 51-52mpg.

Al.

All in all very similar to my experience of the car, same model and age. The dealer experience is different though. Rattles cured without fuss or damage, but also a front fog light that had let in damp. Winter tyres work very well, even wide ones on original alloys. On servicing they set it to fixed, because I forgot to tell them not to. However on pickup I said I wanted longlife, and they put it back there and then.

That said, the same dealer didn't deal well with a parking sensor fault on our Roomster, having to go in three times.

Thanks for the update. I am hopefully buying one of these today. I know the dpf thing has been done to death but how do you find your car's recharge cycle? Does the light come on very often? I will be doing a similar commute, cross country A and B roads 16 miles to work.

Thanks for the update. I am hopefully buying one of these today. I know the dpf thing has been done to death but how do you find your car's recharge cycle? Does the light come on very often? I will be doing a similar commute, cross country A and B roads 16 miles to work.

I haven't seen the light come on once. Every now and again, I pull up outside home and the cooling fan is blowing hard, along with a slight "hot" smell. I've assumed that this is the DPF recycling?

RE Fuel economy

On my last tank, i got 457 miles. The on-board trip had this at about 44mpg but Fuelly said 39.8mpg.