Some pics of the new car, collected it Friday. Although the garage had warned me that delivery would be 3-4 months when I ordered it end-May, it was only 2 months .

Elegance model, sahara beige as they call it (dust colour as far as I'm concerned, and that's a good thing, i hate cleaning cars! :ashamed:) with ivory duo interior. I chose the duo because, after 2 years in Abu Dhabi with a car with full leather interior, I've gone off leather seats. SOmething about leaving the car out in the sun for a few hours when the temperature is 45-50 degrees (centigrade) n the shade, and there isn't any shade to park the car in. Believe me, leather seats are painful :eyepop:!

1.9 TDI (105), DSG box, maxi dot, xenons, esp, heated screen washers, alarm and rubber mats complete the parts list. here in Belgium, the Elegance comes with 15" allows and 195/65R15 tyres (Continentals on mine). I chose the standard wheels/tyres, purely for comfort. My previous car was a Merc A class on 16" 195/50 tyres, and coupled with the rock hard suspension, they were very uncomfortable on anything other than a billiard table.

Didn't take any of the Skoda radios, I transferred my Becker DTM sat-nav. Got the garage to fit the radio, and the only problem they had was with the wiring loom -- pin 3 on the Becker is for the radio mute, so had to go back and get them to cut it. Also connected my iPod and Dension ICE>Link to it.

They told me that since there is so little room i's easier to remove the entire cage (take off the fascia cover, remove four screws) and having watched them when i took it back for the phone mute wire, I can believe them! The head unit sits a bit proud of the dash, but it's OK for me. The iPod connector cable just pushes through the dash -- it's soft enough to not damage the wire and like that there is no damage done to the car.

The satellite antenna sits on the front of the dash, next to the screen, just in front of the other sensor, and is pretty unobstrusive like that.

The dash clip is a Brodit that clips between the air vent and the top of the radio fascia plate. I have two of the pro-clips attached together, one for the iPod, the other for the phone. I would show the iPod connected up, but my wife is travelling with it at the moment.

First trip was a drive to Brussels and back, very comfortable, very relaxing -- stick it in D, dial in the cruise control. Remember to keep eyes open...

It's probably not very fair to compare it to my old merc (a 1999 model), but the Skoda is better built, quieter, bigger, cheaper.

Lovely car

Looks good! Not sure on the mounting point for the phone personally but until I get mine I couldn't think of an alternative position!

The mounting point was driven more by the iPod than the phone -- I use the iPod GUI to navigate through the menus, so wanted it to be in line of site (sort of) and near the the steering wheel.

The phone is a sort of after thought -- I don't use it very much in the car anyway (hence the absence of wires connecting it to anything). The advantage is that it is also easy to see, so I can decide whether to answer or not, and the inbuilt speaker/microphone are just about good enough to use as hands-free where it is at the moment.

Looks good

Nice car John! Love the digital display for the gearbox. Hope you haven't got any kids with that beige interior! (Ribena alert!)

No kids, no pets, just have to remember to eat vanilla ice cream and milky bars so that the stains will match the upholstery :yummy:

I found that the dark interior was just too, well, dark, like entering the batcave or something.

What's cool about the maxi-dot is that it also shows which gear you're in, i.e., it will indicate that the car is in D, and then on the bottom right will show the gear (1,2,3...). Mind you, on my drive yesterday it didn't seem to move out of sixth very much

Also shows which gear you're in when used as a manual.

One happy Briskodian here