New generation of the Fabia to roll off production lines in Mladá Boleslav from the end of August. Factory holiday in Mladá Boleslav, Kvasiny and Vrchlabí from 4 to 15 August.

Final preparations for the ŠKODA production team: The headquarters in Mladá Boleslav will be well underway with preparations for the start-up of the new ŠKODA Fabiaduring the factory holidays between 4 and 15 August. Production of the popular small car is set to begin at the end of August. Extensive maintenance and modernization projects will also be carried out at the other Czech plants in Kvasiny and Vrchlabí. 

“We will be using the non-production days to further optimize production and so be more able to respond to the increasing consumer demand for our models,” explainsMichael Oeljeklaus, ŠKODA Board Member for Production and Logistics. “Above all, we shall be preparing Mladá Boleslav for the launch of the next Fabia generation. We are right on schedule to start the production of our newest model on time and to the highest quality.” 

Extensive adaptation and modernization projects are going to be implemented during the production break, preparing for the launch of the new ŠKODA Fabia at the main plant in Mladá Boleslav. Among other things, a cutting-edge facility for the adjustment of assistance systems will be established in the M1 assembly hall. The conveyor system there is also going to be completely renewed on the ending part of assembly line (control point). The paint shop facilities are to be modernized and their capacity expanded.

About time they sorted the paint shop out, as the paint finish on cars we've had from Malda Boleslav have not been quite as good as those from Kvasiny over the last 4 years or so; flaking paint and foragin objects in the finish particularly are issues we've experienced.

 

 

TP

Yup. Skoda paintwork seems as variable as the British weather.  Luckily for me, my latest Fabia seems well sorted in the bodywork department but the same wasn't true of my first one.

 

RE engines.  I agree with some of the posts above in that it's a disappointing line up.  It seems to all be about the numbers games now with conning people that this is a good thing.

 

Think about this for more than a nano second and it's bad news for drivers in the real world and actually bad news for the planet (seriously!).

 

Lets take the asthmatic line up of under powered diesels and smaller petrols hauling over a ton of metalwork around.  In test conditions on a rolling road where acceleration and lugging three or four people and/or luggage simply isn't a consideration, in perfect conditions, they may or may not actually achieve their test results for economy.

 

Back in the real world, they are dangerously slow on acceleration especially loaded up, travelling from say a standstill down a Mway slip road fully loaded with little oomph if needed to clear that gap before the 44ton artic rolls over the top of them.  Then there's overtaking...unless you have a half mile straight and no traffic, you can forget safe overtakes, so congestion and queueing are order of the day.

Then, more importantly, its the Euro-compliance strangulation of the engines and all the knock on effects of EGRs etc etc making the things less reliable and more costly to run long term.  Now factor in revving the nuts of these things to get anything from them, or having to run them ragged on trunk roads/Mways just to keep up with the safe flow of traffic, and you'll be up and down the gearbox all day long, so real world fuel economy will be pants.

 

Time will tell, but I've yet to drive any micro car or car fitted with micro engine that can perform general duties reliably, adequately or economically when compared with cars fitted with at least a modicum of mid range torque.

 

Rant over.  I wont be in the queue for any of these under powered Furbys anytime soon.  As quick as the Mk2 VRS was, it also highlighted the dangers of getting a gallon of performance from a pint pot in terms of reliability and complexity.

 

Before we all blame Europe for this pretty woeful state of affairs, the car companies themselves are well capable of producing say a decent 1.6 petrol or diesel which is fully Euro compliant, economical, reliable and with sufficient power.  Call me cynical, but a lot of this trend towards under powered or overly complex tiddlers means less long term reliability and more car sales as an end result. Possibly.  More profitability in the tiddler engine department?  Certainly.

Edited 22 August, 201411 yr by SEVrs

Ford Ecoboost 1.0 litre Engines produce 125 ps & tune to 170 ps and stay reliable.

& 1 litre engines seem to move a Focus along quite nicely.

 

It is the Volkswagen Group that seem to be behind the curve with engines below 1200 cc now.

Rather poor performance and reliability all round really from VWG engines for a decade or more now.

Ford Ecoboost 1.0 litre Engines produce 125 ps & tune to 170 ps and stay reliable.

Not from what I've seen, they're starting to die off in alarming numbers. As above, what else would you expect from an engine you have to thrash constantly?

Are they really having issues, i must have missed that..

You like the CVT boxes.

 I had a iQ CVT 1 litre cylinder, that you could rev like a motor bike engine, you could constantly, and i did, and they are lasting really rather well.

Yeah, I like my CVT, but am somewhat apprehensive as to its longevity, especially as I have 350nm of torque and 240 horses to put through it. Thats why it came as standard with a 5 year warranty and I'm not sure I'll keep it after that. However, with that power, it doesn't ever sit at one RPM, but drives more gracefully.

 

Though, to reverse the argument, Subaru lost a lot of reliability going from a 2.0 to the 2.5, as they bored out the same block (already bored out from a 1.6) and made the cylinder walls too thin, so more is not always...more. Mine has the 2.0 though so I'm not so worried about that.

Any particular place you are seeing failures of Ford 1.0 Ecoboost engines, is it the Turbo failure as i understand happened early on,

or is this online stuff?

 

Subaru lost lots of Reliability before that, & that was when they went to Long Service / Oil Change Intervals,

they made such a big deal about it,

and cars were not seeing the Dealership or getting Maintenance or a Professional Look See.

I had a Subaru back then.

 

They then dropped back to sensible Service / Oil Change Intervals.

 

george

Edited 22 August, 201411 yr by goneoffSKi

Some of the posts in this thread are laughable guys, really..

 

Looks like a perfectly normal lineup of engines for a supermini to me, barring the lack of a vRS version.

 

I probably wouldn't take the 1.0litre NAs for the Fabia personally, but you shouldn't be having to "rev the nuts off or constantly change gears" in any turbo engined car.

It is a perfectly normal Volkswagen Group line up of their current Euro 6 compliant Emission Engines, 

Just good enough for the job, and nothing special. 

That will do for the Skoda cars obviously.

 

Face Lift the Body on a slightly revised yet again Platform, use what you had developed already for the other Brands cars,

make it Crispier, Sportier, Emotional, More Youthful, up to 17% more economic, 3 cm lower and 9 cm wider.

(Do not describe as Squat anymore, the media department never warned the CEO that some might think sh1te.)

 

No point using the likes of the ACT/COD engines that are going in the Premium Brands.

 

Job done.

Vorsprung Durch Technik.

Edited 22 August, 201411 yr by goneoffSKi

Ford Ecoboost 1.0 litre Engines produce 125 ps & tune to 170 ps and stay reliable.

& 1 litre engines seem to move a Focus along quite nicely.

 

It is the Volkswagen Group that seem to be behind the curve with engines below 1200 cc now.

Rather poor performance and reliability all round really from VWG engines for a decade or more now.

 

 Not true.  Ford's 1 litre models are proving to be anything but reliable and as for VW group's engines being unreliable for a decade, that's not true either.  The PD unit is one of the most bomb proof reliable motors going (ok...gone now) along with Volvo's venerable 5 cylinder petrol and diesel engines, Mazda's two litre petrols, anything with "Honda" on the badge and along with the diesel blocks found in several million peugot and citroen diesels provide by what is now the French PSA group.  These all had their heyday in the last decade which to my mind has seen some of the most reliable engines ever produced.  It's the modern trend towards tiny engines, with design routes born partly out of examination of the Japanese K car history when looking for efficiency/emmissions controls, and whose primary environment is in built up areas (do they assume all of us live in towns and are limited to 30mph in our smog filled daily lives?);  not in the real world where load lugging robust vehicles that can cruise effortlessly at 70, overtake safely, carry four passengers without significant compromise to performance and keep on going for 200K miles without anything other than routine servicing.  These are all things that matter.  I have yet to see any litre engine deliver.  

 

Most of these have one thing in common: they're not over stressed small engines harnessed with impossible amounts of euro compliance gubbins. However, the little engine fitted to the Honda Jazz, Toyota, and Citroen C1 come mighty close accepting the limitations of size and performance and partially due to them not being overstressed or trying to be all things to all people.

 

Agreed for supermini line ups, there's nothing wrong per se with the current line up. Its just that the newer engines coming out do have question marks over longer term reliability and longevity plus they are appearing in larger cars now.  A focus driven by a litre engine?

 

Conceded that there are an equal number of disasters with larger engines (take mazda's 2.2 diesel which dumps fuel to the oil sump, long bterm destroying the engine, if switched off during regen of the DPF for example) but lets not kid ourselves.  these little cars with weedy engines are slow, not especially reliable and not especially cheap for the average Joe wanting to buy new these days.  At least you can pick up a Furby for comparatively reasonable money.

Edited 22 August, 201411 yr by SEVrs

VW can do great engines like the PD and can ruin them with penny pinching Water pumps and Plastic Impellers and the likes.

Their Engines should Evolve to more Reliability, but sadly they never admit to failures, so they Replace, start again and just move on.

 

My current daily drive is a 2003 Volvo 5 Cylinder 2.0l Petrol.

Only 74,000 miles, but already it has a replacement engine and a brand new autobox.

Then my fun car is one of the 1.4 TSI CAVE Twinchargers with a good engine.

Not one of the 1,800 in the UK that have had a greater than 20% failure rate.

 

PS.

I had a 12 year old estate Passat TDI with 110,000 miles  until just recently.

Edited 22 August, 201411 yr by goneoffSKi

VW can do great engines like the PD and can ruin them with penny pinching Water pumps and Plastic Impellers and the likes.

There Engines should Evolve to more Reliability, but sadly they never admit to failures, so they Replace, start again and just move on.

One thing I will say is VAG are offering a 1.2 on the black edition current model with less power than a base model 14 years older

VW can do great engines like the PD and can ruin them with penny pinching Water pumps and Plastic Impellers and the likes.

Their Engines should Evolve to more Reliability, but sadly they never admit to failures, so they Replace, start again and just move on.

 

My current daily drive is a 2003 Volvo 5 Cylinder 2.0l Petrol.

Only 74,000 miles, but already it has a replacement engine and a brand new autobox.

Then my fun car is one of the 1.4 TSI CAVE Twinchargers with a good engine.

Not one of the 1,800 in the UK that have had a greater than 20% failure rate.

 

PS.

I had a 12 year old estate Passat TDI with 110,000 miles  until just recently.

 

The 2.4 5 pot Volvos were (and still are) generally speaking very reliable.  I know that a few earlier models from 99 to 2006 had issues with throttle bodies, electric power packs in doors failing etc etc, but Volvo sorted this on later cars.

 

By contrast, my old chap still has a Volvo 850 T5 with about 140,000 miles on all original parts except for cam belt change and suspension bushes.  I saw one in my local garage (850 T5) with 247,000 miles still sounding as sweet as a nut and that sailed through its mot.  In fact, it's a rarity to hear anything bad about the 5 pot engines (at least the 2.4/2.5 versions) as they tended to be bullet proof so really unlucky on your part to have one let go at just 74K miles.

 

As to reported failure rates on the latest generation of cars, it's still very early days for getting a real handle on whole life costs for these little highly tuned engines, but I'd be willing to bet they're not as safe a bet as the last generation.

 

Still, I hope that Skoda/VW have learned enough from the failures they have experienced on early TSI engines and addressed the design and penny pinching where it matters.  I wont hold my breath though. At least the starting prices for the supermini Skodas appear to be comparatively reasonable and there's no doubt that things like interiors and paintwork have improved.

 

There's always horror stories on forums I know with all cars, as all models have their faults, whether or not manufacturers like to admit it, but the general trend for small cheap Euro5 compliant engines by and large has done little for longevity or general reliability from what I've read.

Edited 23 August, 201411 yr by SEVrs

Well guys, I must say the Ford eco 1ltr 125ps engine is certainly NOT overstressed. So if there are problems it's not down to being overstressed. Looking at it's make up and specs it is well placed to be mechanically reliable for many many years however you drive it. I've been extracting 200+bhp from 800cc and 1.0ltre engines for years without issues, but not of course the Ford engine. My neighbour has had one in the family for over two years in a Focus Estate in which he has covered over 65k. He gets a constant 52-55mpg against his previous same Focus Estate car with a 1.6 normally aspirated petrol engine which only managed 38-40mpg. Performance on the 1ltr is also much better. He's had no problems at all so far and it gets really driven, if you see what I mean! I too have not heard of anything untoward happening to these engines but do confess to not actively now following the Ford scene since I gave up engine development and took early retirement earlier in the year. Of course you do get the odd one that throws a hissy I expect. I reckon the engine line up in the new Fabia's is about right for most folk. Just depends what you are looking for. 

 

The new 1.4 three cylinder diesels should be a hit. Power output is about the same as the current 1.6 I'm told. Now this should prevent all sorts of problems that the 1.6 is currently accused of. One thing I do know is that diesels are getting smaller and more powerful and more reliable. In fact, one of my last projects was to develop a new 3 pot diesel and believe me, they are very good. You should see fewer complaints about dpf related issues as the 1.4 will work just a littler harder which is what is needed to keep the dpf clean. One of the reasons people get problems with the dpf is they don't 'use' the engine and it just clogs up. 1.6 is just too big for many folk it's believed, and fuel economy is better too with a slightly smaller engine. The 1.4 will have nice driving characteristics from what I know and deliver big performance numbers, and will be very smooth for a three cylinder. It's all good I believe. Just my two penneth! 

Regarding modern engines, its all about the certified CO2 numbers. The easiest way to reduce CO2 in petrol engines in the test cycle is to reduce capacity, due to the need to run stoichiometric at low revs/idle. The other way is to fiddle the results with gimmicks like stop/start.

 

Euro law imposes a maximum average CO2 emission per car per manufacturer on an annual basis, unless they have some special exemption (e.g. some deal involving bungs). If the average is exceeded, a hefty financial penalty is imposed see http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars/index_en.htm

 

This means great pressure on manufacturers to downsize engines, and even means they restrict production of higher CO2 engines and increase the lower ones.

 

Hence the greenline models, some of which are crap, but do wonders for bringing those averages/penalties down.

Edited 29 August, 201411 yr by xman

Well guys, I must say the Ford eco 1ltr 125ps engine is certainly NOT overstressed. So if there are problems it's not down to being overstressed. Looking at it's make up and specs it is well placed to be mechanically reliable for many many years however you drive it. I've been extracting 200+bhp from 800cc and 1.0ltre engines for years without issues, but not of course the Ford engine. My neighbour has had one in the family for over two years in a Focus Estate in which he has covered over 65k. He gets a constant 52-55mpg against his previous same Focus Estate car with a 1.6 normally aspirated petrol engine which only managed 38-40mpg. Performance on the 1ltr is also much better. He's had no problems at all so far and it gets really driven, if you see what I mean! I too have not heard of anything untoward happening to these engines but do confess to not actively now following the Ford scene since I gave up engine development and took early retirement earlier in the year. Of course you do get the odd one that throws a hissy I expect. I reckon the engine line up in the new Fabia's is about right for most folk. Just depends what you are looking for. 

 

The new 1.4 three cylinder diesels should be a hit. Power output is about the same as the current 1.6 I'm told. Now this should prevent all sorts of problems that the 1.6 is currently accused of. One thing I do know is that diesels are getting smaller and more powerful and more reliable. In fact, one of my last projects was to develop a new 3 pot diesel and believe me, they are very good. You should see fewer complaints about dpf related issues as the 1.4 will work just a littler harder which is what is needed to keep the dpf clean. One of the reasons people get problems with the dpf is they don't 'use' the engine and it just clogs up. 1.6 is just too big for many folk it's believed, and fuel economy is better too with a slightly smaller engine. The 1.4 will have nice driving characteristics from what I know and deliver big performance numbers, and will be very smooth for a three cylinder. It's all good I believe. Just my two penneth! 

 

By the sounds of it, the new 3 cylinder VAG diesel has been getting good write ups in the press in the new Polo. Will be a hard decision whether to go back to petrol after 20 years and have a TSI or try out this new wonder diesel? 4 years is a long time to be stuck with something your not keen on. Does this developement of the new 3 pot TDi show that the 1.6CR was an interim engine or simply wasnt as successful as hoped?

Edited 29 August, 201411 yr by threadbear

Does this developement of the new 3 pot TDi show that the 1.6CR was an interim engine or simply wasnt as successful as hoped?

 

No, its a business decision driven by EU law.

 

Phasing-in of requirements

The EU fleet average target of 130g/km will be phased in between 2012 and 2015. In 2012, an average of 65% of each manufacturer's newly registered cars must comply with the limit value curve set by the legislation. This will rise to 75% in 2013, 80% in 2014, and 100% from 2015onwards. A shorter phase-in period will apply to the target of 95g/km: 95% of each manufacturer's new cars will have to comply with the limit value curve in 2020, increasing to 100% in 2021.

Penalty payments for excess emissions

If the average CO₂ emissions of a manufacturer's fleet exceed its limit value in any year from 2012, the manufacturer has to pay an excess emissions premium for each car registered. This premium amounts to €5 for the first g/km of exceedance, €15 for the second g/km, €25 for the third g/km, and €95 for each subsequent g/km. From 2019, the cost will be €95 from the first gram of exceedance onwards.

Eco-innovations

Under the test procedure used for vehicle type approval, certain innovative technologies cannot demonstrate their CO₂-reducing effects when being type approved. Manufacturers can be granted emission credits equivalent to a maximum emissions saving of 7g/km per year for their fleet if they equip vehicles with innovative technologies, based on independently verified data. These eco-innovation credits will be maintained for the 2021 target.

I reckon they will eventually launch a warm version possibly with the 1.4 150ps ACT motor ala Polo BlueGT

They have been selling so few Polo Blue GT since its launch, probably because of the price, that they can hardly go wrong.

The 1.9PD was one of the most reliable engines VAG have ever produced but the 2.0PD engine has been one of the worst VAG engines for reliability. Skoda escaped many of the early problems as they fitted the unit fairly late. Water Pump failures, Balancer Shaft issues and Injector failures. And then VOSA having to step in to force VAG to fix the faulty units.

 

Ford have had some issues with the 1.0 Ecoboost but the vast number of units sold means the failure rate is actually quite small and the turbo has undergone redesign.

 

The new 2015 Mondeo will have a 1.0 Ecoboost with 140ps and 170ps with maximum torque from 1400rpm and an overboost feature if the early press releases are accurate.

 

BMW have a 1.5 litre 3 cylinder petrol with 230PS and PSA have their 1.6T selling with 260PS.

 

So VAG's 1.2 TSi with 110ps and 1.4TSi ACT with 140-150ps is hardly pushing the envelope of what's possible.

 

A 1.2/1.4TSi single turbo Fabia with 170ps should be easily possible.

 

Lee

 

A 1.2/1.4TSi single turbo Fabia with 170ps should be easily possible.

 

Lee

 

Unless it can do 130g/km or less on the official tests, its unlikely to ever be built.

Unless it can do 130g/km or less on the official tests, its unlikely to ever be built.

 

 

Shouldn't be a problem.

 

The 1.4TSi with 150ps in the bigger Leon is at 109g/km.

 

Lee

Ford's new 1.5 petrol Ecoboost in the Focus with 182PS will have 127g/km

They have been selling so few Polo Blue GT since its launch, probably because of the price, that they can hardly go wrong.

They didnt sell many of the 1.4 twinchargers, and look at thats reputation.