Hello. It seems I have to say hello here which seems very friendly.

I take possesion of a shiny new Fabia VRS on the 2/9. I've never bought a new car before, generally either never having the means, or being ideologically opposed to the idea. I had absolutely no plans to buy a new car at this time, but I was going past a Skoda shop a couple of weeks ago with an hour to spare and thought i'd go and waste someones time with a test drive for the fun of it. I have been driving a fairly old Audi A6 tdi/90 estate which I have been very happy with, but the Skoda took me back to the couple of Mark 2 Golf GTD's I had previously owned, (the first a left hand drive one I bought from the daughter of a a German driving instructor and the last one owned until 18 months ago when someone rather considerately drove into my rear). The Golf GTD was a rarity in this country, (80hp on the intercooled version), with only 1400 ever being imported, but they were far faster and torqueier than the power figures suggested. I recently got into a GTD taxi on a trip to Tbilisi only to realise how much I missed them. The VRS is the first car I have sinced driven which came close to the GTD experience, (and some), so I just had to have one.

http://www.britishpressphoto.org/markpinder/index.html

Welcome to Briskoda! Hope you enjoy your new car

Welcome Mark.

Unfortunately, you're not the first to fall into Skoda's evil plans of buying a fabia vrs.

Everyone who posts on Briskoda saying they testdrove one ended up buying one :(

Good decision though

Mark Welcome to the site :orb_wave:

See you are a press photographer, Hope you can get all your gear into the Furby ?

Welcome Mark. I get mine the day before. We shall have to share our thoughts that weekend !! Hope the day is a good one

Many thanks for the welcome chaps, this is friendly!!

One thing I forgot to mention in my introductory message was that Skoda ownership is not actually new to me. I had a 120L about 10 or 11 years ago. It cost me

Welcome to Briskoda Mark

A belated welcome from me too.

Well, what can I say. I've had the car since Friday and i'm absolutely blown away.

The acceleration for passing slower moving traffic on b roads in 4th is absolutely brilliant and really helps towards the kind of practical speed I want for getting from A to B quickly and with minimum fuss and without having to drive at lunatic speeds for the rest of the journey. As a motorway hill climber it is superb, sprinting up them in 5th and more often 6th often leaving bigger cars behind or at least keeping up with them.

The ride is not what i'd become used to in my Audi A6 estate, (especialy on bad roads), but it's not fair to compare the vrs with a big German luxobarge with it's massive wheelbase and touring suspension. Although levels of equipment in the Furby are still far greater than what I had in an 8 year old Audi. Perhaps the Skoda could be described as a luxospeedboat?

I've done a little over a thousand miles since then, which is not a mileage I usually do in this period but it included getting the car from Derbyshire where I bought it back home to Tyneside and a fair few longish trips to the borders and Teesside. I've brimmed the tank twice, (without venting, and the mpg average has been what I expected, (or maybe a touch less), at 42.5mpg and 44.5 respectively. The trip computer was pretty much bang on with working out the mileage with pen and paper.

I have not gone over 3,000 revs for the first 1000 miles and am now going up to 3,500 regularly for the next thousand. However, I have still been accelerating quite hard up to those revs so hopefully the pistons are bedding in nicely. I am seeing very little smoke from the rear and the oil level has dropped maybe 2mm down the dipstick so oil consumption seems minimal.

I've not done much town driving, but was a little disapointed to see the trip 1 computer drop to the high thirties poodling around Newcastle this afternoon running some errands, but I had only driven 10 miles into town from cold, but then took a blast down to Teesside and back home where it went back up to showing around 45mpg.

There is absolutely nothing I dislike about this car to date, although the learning curve has been quite steep, (largely trying to fathom out the radio and get a conceptual grasp of the trip computer), I keep on coming across subtle details of using the car which never fail to impress. The cabin build quality is great, front legroom is superb and the feel of the solidity and finish is such that I don't even notice that i'm not in the Audi. I have never driven a car that leaves me with so little stress at the end of a drive, and the bad back which I only recently started to have appears to have all but disappeared

I'm an enthusiastic driver who enjoys his cars, (although not to the extent of many on these forums), but at the end of the day it is still just a tool to me, but what a fantastic tool. Practical performance is superb and largely beyond what I am generally comfortable using and the economy looks set to be very promising and well beyond anything I have ever seen in a car previously. This is a seriously well sorted car.

The only down side I have had, is that a lot of other drivers do actually seem to know what this is and either tailgate or try to provoke races, but dropping a cog or two and a quick dab on the juice before pulling over or letting them drop back seems to make the point. I have had people occassionally being just generally horrid to me, (ie not making space when coming off slip roads or closing gaps when overtaking), but I think, (and hope), that this is new car jealousy rather than the badge, although I am thinking of removing the rear vrs badge in any case, so if anybody can give definitive info on the removal of this, it would be appreciated.

As a car in standard form, I think this is pretty unbeatable, althogh in saying that, I have not driven anything younger than 8 years old for a long time in comparison.

And finally, at the risk of sounding like Gwyneth Paltrow, I'd just like to say thanks to Paul at Autofinders, very little wait, great communications, great price and no dealer style patronising bull****. I want to buy a car, I know what I want and I can make up my own mind without having inanities spouted at me, cheers mate.

I just hope that I'm not back on these forums soon bemoaning my smugness!

Love it!