Discuss ? :confused: ?

Discuss ? :confused: ?

A hot hatch was defined in the late 80's and early 90's with the golf gti being the first. If you compare it to those cars, astra gte, xr2i, xr3 etc then it is definately a hot hatch. If you were to compare it against the new astra sport hatch vxr, civic type r etc, then it is still a hot hatch. It might not be the quickest car off the line, (although with asr off, it's not bad) but torque alone puts it up with the big boys. It takes some beating. The brakes don't fade, it handles very well, apart from the modern trend to make cars understeer, and it goes like "snot off a chickens lip" to quote another member.

Hot Hot Hot!!!!

Well most "warm" hatches (eg slaxo vtr , 306xt , fester zetec s etc) have had 0-60 times the wrong side of 10 seconds.

The official figures for the furby aren't much better than that , but the real 0-60 (I've seen around 8.5 mentioned a lot) puts it in the "fairly toasty hatch" category if not exactly boiling.

Astra Sport hatch and the Civic type R are a class above the Fabia and its a bit unfair to compare really. They are in competition with the Octavia in class.

Lets work on book figures here.

The Fabia is a warm hatch and in comparison to a Clio 182 is definately out of it's league in the performance stakes. If we are only considering performance in this discussion then the Fabia is definately only warm, the car understeers to easy and the body roll is comapared to the hot hatch competition is immense, the brakes also fade easy and wouldnt be suitable for track use.

A clio 182 is also 15k so you'd expect it to be faster and the furby doesn't have to be the hottest hatch , just fast enough to meet expectations.

Also most manufacturers have a choice of warm and hot models and like most things skoda the furby sits somewhere in the middle.

definatly a hot hatch, what other hothatches have as much torque apart from a small minority

IMHO, in total stock form, it's warm.

However, you can of course do things to it, such as get the ECU remapped / chipped and have a hybrid turbo and FMIC and exhaust for engine performance. You can change the brakes to bigger ones with better pads for better stopping and you can fettle with aftermarket suspension to make it go round corners better.

Oh, and you can also lighten it a bit (it is lardy in all honesty) - for instance, take out the spare wheel which you can't do with the 182

A few days ago, at Bruntingthorpe, my furby (tweaked) was definately quicker than other standard furbies (as it should be on paper) and a certain Alfa Romeo which had a V6 IIRC

HTH

I have to say that in standard form, the vRS is not quite a hot hatch. Its still a top motor, but imho hot hatches are about thrills, and thrills is more than just "in gear shove"...

After remap and Eibachs, its a different kettle of fish. Then its the finest hot hatch this side of

When compared to the current crop of hot hatches it is not.

It is a warm hatch, but in real world driving the in gear pull compensates a lot.

Standard: warm hatch

Remapped: toasty (stolen from another post in this thread) seems to sum it up nicely.

Heavily modified: hot

I reckon you can make it hot by remap, FMIC, upgraded turbo, brakes, suspension.

The brakes DO fade even on the road, although you do have to use them pretty heavily and only noticed it when there where loads of roundabouts with 70mph straights between them

Track use - not been there, not likely to do that either. It's not really designed for track use, but then you can always change everything

It's a hard car to categorize, not too fast 0-60 compared with many 'hot' hatches, but pretty damn quick in gear which helps in real life. Doesn't fit in traditional categories very well. :confused:

It's warm If someone said hot hatch to me, I'd be thinking of the Clio Cup which has a decent amount of power and excellent handling. The Fabia is more of a well kitted cruiser that needs money spent on it to get the power and handling on a par with the Clio

Chris

A clio 182 is also 15k so you'd expect it to be faster and the furby doesn't have to be the hottest hatch , just fast enough to meet expectations.

What web site have you been looking at? you can get a full spec Clio 182 with cup pack for 12k brand new, and on autotrader about 10k with 10k miles on and 04 plate :confused:

Also the question was, is a Fabia a hot hatch and the answer is no, not in comparison to other cars in the same bracket.

Having owned the vRS and now a Golf GTI Mk2, I dont really think you can call the Fabia a hot hatch, the GTI Mk2 is a far more focused driving machine, which brakes and handles better, is lighter, accelerates just as well and is clearly far more exciting to drive.

Thats not taking anything away from the Fabia though, which is a lovely car, and I kinda miss being able to jump in it knowing fine well it was going to start, unlike the Golf, which left me stranded at 3am this morning

I'm with ScoobyChris on this one.

Seems like you got a bit unlucky there Paul :(

As for hot/warm, as per my prev post you can make it 'hotter' with a bit of investment

But a hot hatch is one that doesnt need extra money spending

Thus my comment about it being warm as standard

warm, like the 4x4 is only warm but both have potential with mods

Fabia vRS - Hot Hatch or simply Warm? - to answer the question, warm, not hot. If you were talking about other things such as reliability, practicality, tuning etc then im sure it's up there with the best of them.

Just warm, need to spend money to make it warmer. Too heavy to ever be a hot one.

:bump:

What are peoples views now then?

I notice a few of the owners of said hatch have now moved on, what are your views in retrospect?

What do new owners think?

On reflection after owrnership I think I'd have to say warm as standard and hot(ish) if tweeked.... but then again is a true hot hatch "hot" as standard?

To quote Richard Hammond "It might be a Skoda, and it might be a diesel, but its definitely a hot hatch".

I have to admit that when I had the Fabia vRS for some time, I started to doubt it was a hot hatch, but having driven lots more cars since I think its definitely a hot hatch, and a pretty unmatched one at that.

Why has this been moved?

When I originaly posted this thred ages ago it was left in the General section?

The aim was to get a general view not a Fabia owners specific view?