Personally I think a lot of people would rather have a "Golf GTI" over a SKoda, if the difference is only £50 per month.

The Skoda may be a more practical car, but the Golf has better spec and a lot more street cred with the uninitiated.

If people didn't care about the badge you wouldn't see loads and loads of base spec Audi on the roads with worse spec than Skodas, but higher prices.

Entirely true but also the reason it has zero "street cred".

just tried to configure one for myself, but seems like a lot of the options arent in there? wheres the parking sensors? coming in at £25645 for me so far, I priced a Golf at £30774 IIRC

  

I didnt think you could specify front sensors alone - it has to be via the parking pack thingamy bob which gives you them all round. Personally I think you'll see fronts become available seperately and maybe even standard cruise offered soonish 

Is this not the 'Front Assist'? ie everything but adaptive cruise control for £300

This may explain why ACC on a golf is only £500 if it already comes speced with front parking sensors I'm guessing?

Personally I think a lot of people would rather have a "Golf GTI" over a SKoda, if the difference is only £50 per month.

The Skoda may be a more practical car, but the Golf has better spec and a lot more street cred with the uninitiated.

 

If people didn't care about the badge you wouldn't see loads and loads of base spec Audi on the roads with worse spec than Skodas, but higher prices.

 

I think your spot on. lots will migrate over where space isnt a problem, im budget based so will stick, maybe! badge? not for bothered me but your right, most are

So it will be interesting to find out in the next JD power survey with the new models,  if customers are more satisfied overall with the car & dealer experience to pull VW above Skoda, & how many will beeatch about having paid over the odds. 

 

Looking at PCP prices & weighing them up against purchase i am surprised people still actually buy cars.

PCP in its way ties you to a brand unless you have got the finances to jump brands at the end of every contract. I would bet your house that anyone who has a car on PCP will not be without one, & if youre not lucky enough to be able to keep paying out a deposit to jump brands or buy out the remaining value its either stay with brand or be without a car. 

So it will be interesting to find out in the next JD power survey with the new models,  if customers are more satisfied overall with the car & dealer experience to pull VW above Skoda, & how many will beeatch about having paid over the odds. 

 

Looking at PCP prices & weighing them up against purchase i am surprised people still actually buy cars.

PCP in its way ties you to a brand unless you have got the finances to jump brands at the end of every contract. I would bet your house that anyone who has a car on PCP will not be without one, & if youre not lucky enough to be able to keep paying out a deposit to jump brands or buy out the remaining value its either stay with brand or be without a car. 

 

 

There will be plenty that buy the car at the end. Did with our last one.

The PCP and finance quoters, I'm not going there. We are not discussing how much you could have those cars for if you had no money to buy them. I won't be discussing finance based prices, because that has nothing to do with actual purchase price, value of the new car , and in many quoted cases even true ownership of it. OTR, from dealers right now, if you walked with a bag full of cash and ordered one, is the topic.

Sorry but lets face it there arent that many people who'd be looking to buy a Skoda Octavia who would necessarily look to go and buy one outright with cash, £20k is alot of disposable readies just to go and drop on a car for most people. Both my wife and I have good jobs, decent combined income and own our own 3 bed house but i dont have 24k just sat in an account....very few people nowadays have money burning holes in their pockets.

Why is it not valid to discuss the deals people are getting on HP/PCP, Id say it has more relevance than a cash purchase as only a priviledged few would do that.

So it will be interesting to find out in the next JD power survey with the new models, if customers are more satisfied overall with the car & dealer experience to pull VW above Skoda, & how many will beeatch about having paid over the odds.

Looking at PCP prices & weighing them up against purchase i am surprised people still actually buy cars.

PCP in its way ties you to a brand unless you have got the finances to jump brands at the end of every contract. I would bet your house that anyone who has a car on PCP will not be without one, & if youre not lucky enough to be able to keep paying out a deposit to jump brands or buy out the remaining value its either stay with brand or be without a car.

Not really had a valuation on my 6 month old Blackline estate DSG today. 5900 miles and immaculate, I owe a shade under £17k on it and it trades at approx £16,750.

I dont think thats bad, 6 months down the line into a 42 month PCP and it would cost me maybe 200 quid to buy myself out of it. If I pressed hard enough I could probably walk away fron it now if I had to, hardly put any money in myself either.

There is one really important , not thought about, point missing from all this discussion about cost - Dealer Service & not just the 'bend over backwards' assistance to get you to buy the car, what about after you drive away, & the salesman is no longer interested, where you get problems & the whole experience goes sour.

(...) So it will be interesting to find out in the next JD power survey with the new models,  if customers are more satisfied overall with the car & dealer experience to pull VW above Skoda,

This is actually very good point. One of the things that attracted me to Skoda world from Japanese makers was reliability surveys. I spend 3 to 5 hours a day in my car and expect my rides to be bulletproof mechanically. Oddly enough, neither of my Octavias were particularly reliable, and if I am to be honest - the 2010 L&K 1.8TSI DSG would be just fine for the next 3 years and 100,000 miles if it wasn't for the fact just how much downtime it created, how much I am afraid this downtime will happen again and how difficult it was to get any dealer to fix them.

I ordered my current Octavia in may 2010. Visited 7 dealers in total trying to haggle my way to L&K with everything option sheet had for a reasonable buck, and after few weeks finally agreed deal with James from Epsom Skoda, who was a member on this forum back then.

Inside the warranty I spend more than 6 weeks in curtesy cars, while my Octavia had new DSG gearbox at 7 months, new wheel bearing at 8 months, new DSG clutch pack at 24 months (approx 47,000 miles), a new tailgate aperture gasket at 27 months, while trying to solve mysterious flooding of spare wheel well in the boot and new sunroof drainage system at 29 months to finally solve mysterious flooding of spare wheel well in the boot.

I couldn't get any my immediate local dealers to provide 'bend over backwords' experience or even just to properly diagnose and resolve any of the problems. Small Skoda dealer 1 mile from my house is completely useless, another one 10 miles away wasn't interested in resolving any of it, next branch 20 miles further was the same - would do everything in their power to hear no evil, see no evil. By then we all knew already there was something really wrong with 7 speed DSG boxes.

At the end, I currently drive 32 miles to Canterbury to service, fix and resolve any issues. It's the only dealership that I could convince to give a damn and they provided five star service every time. Almost every time. Except the last problem. Oil consumption. At approximately 50,000 miles my TSI grew appetite for oil. We arranged a weighting test, oil consumption was confirmed at 0.25-0.3L every 620 miles. My trusted dealer couldn't do anything as this was deemed acceptable. Skoda tolerance for oil consumptionin TSI engines is 1 litre every 620miles. You heard it right. They wouldn't fix it, because manufacturer claims the car can, in some circumstances, go through the entire long life engine oil capacity in less than 3000 miles. That's just normal. It is confirmed by a note in your manual book. Since then consumption got gradually worse, and now oscillates at around 1 litre every 1500 miles. Still not outside manufacturers tolerance, if a little pain in the four letters. Plus now the car is outside of warranty, so it's my problem.

The quality of build, if I am to be honest, was a bit average. I had a mechanical abrasion on steering wheel and discoloured internal B pillar panels since new, some small panel gap issues, lose bluetooth unit cover under drivers seat, bluetooth audio streaming works in only one audio channel, although phone calls always activate both speakers. All of those were deemed unresolvable at the dealer back then, and I wasn't too fussed about cosmetics to hand over the car and wait another 7 months for new one to be built again. Bolero radio still "eats" starts of the songs and pauses between tracks from ipod. No firmware upgrades cured that. Ipod playback still circles in loop within one album and one playlist without moving to the next, although USB playback does the opposite. MDI connector still has to be ripped off the socket every time I want to change USB to ipod. Setting cooling in glove box for prolonged period of time can still make MDI display "No media connected" every now and then. All of which are minute, irrelevant little things you learn to live with and no longer notice. Because the car was great value. No VAG car could even touch it. It doesn't rattle, after some tweaks to internal insulation and tyres it's quiet and comfortable ride.

But three years on in FL Octy I still read year and year praises of reliability and customer service and I am quite puzzled by it. Fair enough, I might have been a little unlucky with my sunroof and other bits, but the DSG thing was not "if", it was "when" for everyone who had it. And the fix, the clutches don't guarantee no re-occurence. And so was the whole galore of issues plaguing last generation of diesels in Octavia. And the oil appetite among TSI users, it's not unheard of. But Skoda is still on top of autoexpress surveys and JD etc etc. And the only explanation I can think of is, we paid peanuts, we expected primates. We got some service and we praise our blessings high. Either that, or the rest of the competition is just terribly unreliable?

Edited 18 July, 201312 yr by v0n

Yet mine is running with over 100% additional power and is proving to be bullet proof at 35,000 miles. In fact I've never had a Skoda cost me more than £23 to repair (engine temp sensor on my mk 1 octy 4x4 turbo)

To have a car with little or no issues is generally luck of the draw with whoever you buy a car from.

My Fabia vRS was "OK" but it had some stupid things go wrong with it and spent more time in the dealership being put right than Id expect over the course of 18 months.

Blackline has generally been good as gold in its first 6 months and hoping it continues that way.

Just under 28k for me which will be spot on for my next company car

Meteor combi petrol manual with columbus, s/roof, heated seats and pretty the same options as i have on this one.

No mention of MDI? Is that now "AMI"? Same thing or not?

I think the combi needs the 19" wheel option though, so i might need to add those too..

Disappointed Rob that you didn't mention lowered suspension...or black wing mirrors...

My father in law just picked up a C220 CDi Sport for £23k, 6 month old with 10k on the clock. Auto, Nav, Xenons etc. More standard kit then the vrs. Having run a brand new one for six months that is a bargain.

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My father in law just picked up a C220 CDi Sport for £23k, 6 month old with 10k on the clock. Auto, Nav, Xenons etc. More standard kit then the vrs. Having run a brand new one for six months that is a bargain.

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And that's a totally uncomparable deal. Different class, second hand, almost double the mileage you'd expect too. How do you know what the values of the VRS will be like at 6 months old? THe VRS is also availabe with DSG, Nav and Xenons (standard).

We run C220 & C250 cdi's on our fleet at work at we've had nothing but problems with them. Shocking reliability, at least three vehicles would have been rejected if they had been private buyers. One gent lost all electrical power and assistance whilst in the outside lane of a motorway, the fact he managed to pull up without an accident was just shear luck. Winter weather performance (or lack of it) is another story altogether!

Needless to say we'll be moving our business elsewhere as each vehicle reaches its 3 year return period.

Yet mine is running with over 100% additional power and is proving to be bullet proof at 35,000 miles. In fact I've never had a Skoda cost me more than £23 to repair (engine temp sensor on my mk 1 octy 4x4 turbo)

likewise, running 100% increase here, and *touch wood* reliable so far, my local dealer has been very good too thankfully!

And that's a totally uncomparable deal. Different class, second hand, almost double the mileage you'd expect too. How do you know what the values of the VRS will be like at 6 months old? THe VRS is also availabe with DSG, Nav and Xenons (standard).

I disagree, someone on here has slated Mercs for reliability but i think this is just bad luck. My father in law had an 06 plate S320 CDi for three years, loved the car and never really gave him any bother. He then bought three nearly new Audis and only one of them didnt give him problems. Now has a 61 plate E350 CDi Avantgarde Which he got a great deal on, its bloody quick for a big old tank and is better on fuel and cheaper to tax than my diesel vRS.

Yes its a different class of car but thats exactly the point, a 6 month old 10k Merc will feel barely used, its IMO a far better classier car, better specified a standard than even the new vRS (which doesnt come with standard nav by the way is a minimum 550 pound option for Amundsen; though you have to generally buy a map pilot module for the merc but its pretty cheap).

I looked at them myself when i bought the BL and the only reason I didnt get one was I didnt want to spend much more than 20k on a car and I couldnt get a facelift C class AMG sport estate diesel within budget. The deal mentioned is 10k at least off list which at 6 months old is v good value.

Big problem for me is that in reality the new vRS doesnt offer enough of an incentive for me to push to change it, IMO its not hugely better looking, kit wise its almost worse spec for spec and if I bought a diesel its hardly any quicker, just a bit more frugal and cheap to tax....but its 25k vs 20k....it just does not stack up, even with a 10 percent discount I still think its a bit too expensive.

likewise, running 100% increase here, and *touch wood* reliable so far, my local dealer has been very good too thankfully!

Ooooh, I thought you were still on stage 2 and 300bhp?! Anyway thats going to take it off topic.... I'll check your project thread later.

I disagree,

How can you disagree - I didnt give an opinion, I stated FACTS. Different class, second hand with 10k on the clock so not new and no one knows exactly what value will be placed on a VRS at 6 months old yet.   I wasnt going to mention reliability as thats more specific to the car than the model perhaps but the only person I know with a reliable Merc is a best mate who has an R reg V8 S Class. Everyone else I know thats had something more recent (C class x 3, E class x 2 and a Big GL) has had electrical issues (some major), premature engine failure or a complete replacement gearbox at less than 20k (the GL)!! Not for me Im afraid even though there are some very cheap deals to be had on them.

How can you disagree - I didnt give an opinion, I stated FACTS. Different class, second hand with 10k on the clock so not new and no one knows exactly what value will be placed on a VRS at 6 months old yet. I wasnt going to mention reliability as thats more specific to the car than the model perhaps but the only person I know with a reliable Merc is a best mate who has an R reg V8 S Class. Everyone else I know thats had something more recent (C class x 3, E class x 2 and a Big GL) has had electrical issues (some major), premature engine failure or a complete replacement gearbox at less than 20k (the GL)!! Not for me Im afraid even though there are some very cheap deals to be had on them.

I disagreed with your statement that its not a comparable deal. 23k for a 6 month old 34k Mercedes IMO is much better value than paying near enough list price on a new 25k Skoda. A six month old car with 10k on the clock is still practically new and an 11k effective discount is wildly better than anything you'd ever achieve on a Skoda. I'd also given the choice rather be driving a C220 AMG Sport to a vRS Octavia.

And for the record VAG stuffs not entirely reliable.....my last Golf had loads of build quality issues and its AC failed just before it turned 3, my Fabia vRS had a knocking noise at the front that was never diagnosed, the DRL switch broke and had to be replaced, needed 4 new alloys after 9 months and rhe b pillar vinyl wraps started coming off after a few months and were begrudgingly replaced under warranty...and looked just as carp afterwards. My father in law had an A4 avant that filled up with water twice in space of a few months requiring two new convenience ECUs, an A6 allroad that required two new exhaust manifolds at 50k miles because the swirl flaps broke, if it hadn't been under warranty would have cost about 2k and my Dad has a nearly 3 year old A5 Sportback whose engine burns a litre of oil every 1k miles and has recently had some electrical problems (the rear view camera wiring borked and had to be replaced.

My Octavia is actually the first VAG car ive had for some time thats been by and large faultless but theres time yet. Dont get me wrong I like VAG products and ive been fairly loyal to their brands for the past number of years but they're hardly faultless.....mercs arent either but its unfair to term all Mercs as such as their far from it...if anything I still think Mercedes on the whole still build a better quality product when compared to an Audi.

I disagreed with your statement that its not a comparable deal. 23k for a 6 month old 34k Mercedes IMO is much better value than paying near enough list price on a new 25k Skoda.

You can disagree all you like as it may be considered better value by some but I stated its not a comparable deal.

So I eventually found the configurator

So I specced up a potential car.

 

Petrol 6 speed manual

Metalic paint

Columbus with the colour Maxidot

Bluetooth

Heated Front Seats

Sunset Glass

 

Comes to £25,625 which I didn't think was too bad.

Of course there are plenty of other things I could add - but I was looking at a realistic replacement for my existing.

I can do without cruise control (and I'm hoping there might be a way to aftermarket that anyway) and the full leather was a luxury last time I could live without.

Some of the other options would be nice - keyless system I've always taken a fancy too etc.

But as the "basic spec" and the above few options I'd be happy and the price would be acceptable - and of course those are launch prices, always a chance of offers and deals in the future.

Edited 19 July, 201312 yr by Stoofa

If cruise control can only be the adaptive version (can't see normal version on the configurator) it'll not be a retro fit.

 

Is regular cruise an option/possible?

I think the cruise should have been specced as standard, but other than that it was probably about right.

 

I have the heated screen on my yeti, and would have liked that on the rs, but only as a stand alone, not winter pack.

If cruise control can only be the adaptive version (can't see normal version on the configurator) it'll not be a retro fit.

 

Is regular cruise an option/possible?

 

It is, yeah.  £180.

You can disagree all you like as it may be considered better value by some but I stated its not a comparable deal.

Well case in point...6 month old 10k mile 34k Merc for 23k.....my 6 month old 6k mile BL which I paid 20k for would still likely retail for 18k on my local dealers forecourt. Sorry but honestly what is better value?? I know you love your Skodas Yeti-man, im pretty fond of them too but the economics there are plain as day. Totally entitled to your view though but I know what id rather have for the money....I just wouldnt right now be prepared to spend more than 20k on a car thats all.