Hi,I am looking to buy a fabia sdi estate as the size is great for what i need and i believe they are very reliable,my only concern is i would be using it alot in west Wales which is mainly steep hills and would like to hear from anyone who uses an sdi for this type of driving.

I have no Fabia SDI experience, but when I was considering a MK5 Golf a while ago, I accidentally test drove the 2.0SDI instead of the 2.0TDI I can honestly say, I will never, ever buy an SDI. The performance between the two was night and day. It's not that I was expecting a rocketship, but did expect a bit of response from the engine when I needed it, but I felt it was as flat as a pancake.

IMHO, you can use an SDI for this type of thing and as long as you are not in a rush, you will get there no problems.

Plus it could be worth noting you may get worse MPG from the SDI, having to boot it more where there is no turbo providing extra power

I think they're slow in general. My wife had one as her 1st car and I considered it unsafe, especially on the motorway/dual carrigeway.

I test drove one (labelled as a TDI, heh) when looking for my lass' first car. It was undriveable over the hills in the area and I deemed it too unsafe to bother with. With me, her and the dealer in the car I had it to the floor in 2nd trying to get up a hill and was doing about 15mph.

they are insanely slow,made a great first car for me though.

I've never actually had a VAG SDI, but I once had a Peugeot 106 1.4 Diesel.....no turbo.....55bhp If I remember correctly.

 

Compared to a TDI, it was slow.....0-60 in 18 seconds or so. But when you own one, after a day or two you get pretty used to the lower performance, and I would not say they are dangerous......what could be dangerous is driving a 140bhp car then occasionally jumping into a normally aspirated diesel and expecting the same acceleration pulling out of junctions etc.

 

All in all I got on pretty well with the normally aspirated Peugeot It would happily cruise at 75 mph on the motorway, and no matter how hard I drove it, I always got 60 mpg out of it all the time. 

Too slow LOL Romford to Bristol in 2 hours 15mins.

Unsafe LOL No such thing as an unsafe car assuming its sound, just an unsafe driver.

Won't pull up hills LOL Did 4 up plus luggage regularly. Pulled the same loaded or empty 

Poor economy LooooooooL Worst I ever got flogging the granny out of it for 2 hours and 15mins was 58mpg

 

How on earth do all those Taxis get people around then?

You just have to plan your drive a little that's all.

Basic stuff like being in the correct gear and planning your progress overtakes.

Real grass roots basic driving skills. Pro active driving as opposed to reactive driving.

No you don't have bags of acceleration to get you out of trouble like some cars do but

it's no worse than older cars of the 70s and 80s. They weren't rocket ships either.

You lot have been spoilt by the prevalence of turbos on cars since the mid 90s.

Before that they were quite a rare thing.  

I'd love this engine in my next van, bombproof and longlasting.

With little to go wrong.

Thanks for the replies so far,i've been driving diesel vans for years slow ones which used to have to be driven and in recent years turbo'd one's with dmf to take clutch judder away though without dmf this was never an issue once used to the vehicle,i used to drive a caddy D reg which seemed very slow and noisy till i got used to it but thats 20 years ago and i cant really remember how good / bad it was,i have heard turbo and dmf give trouble regularly on tdi and dont want the hassle but might have to end up going down this road to get decent performance,thanks again for the replies.