A few months ago I got dragged into a market research meeting about car looks and fittings. I don't know who the survey was put on for but all the pictures were of current crossover cars and I thought they all looked horrible, lumpy meaningless bits of "styling",  like toys or something a 5 year old might scribble.

 

They asked about having windscreen displays of info (instead of "looking down at the dashboard" presumably). I can't imagine anything worse than having changing images projected onto my windscreen - i want to look through it, not at it.

Each to their own I guess.

I hate the look of crossovers and SUV with a passion, and will always pick a traditional car over them. The Mk III isn't the most beautiful car out there, but it isn't offensive to look at either. Perhaps not what I'd pick if I had an unlimited budget, but I can certainly live with it.

 

But I have to say I'm in the opposite camp when it comes to HUDs, I'd love to have one. One less distraction for the driver, when you don't have to look down at the instrument cluster for navigation info etc. Unfortunately they're still pretty rare in this price range.

Personally I prefer the looks and the practicality of the hatch, it looks like a saloon but has the benefit of a decent opening of the hatch to get stuff into it unlike many saloons that have large boot space but have a letter box opening to load it. The estate has better visibility though as you would expect

 

I Also like to be able to open the hatch when some cheese in a van parks right behind you. This is not quite so much of a problem though on the Octy estate as the tail gate pivot point is a little more forward than many other wagons but still requires more space behind the car.

 

The car has a modern sharp, clean but not in your face style (including the vRS). Functional, practical and still better value spec for spec than a lot of the competition. Maybe thats why I bought one. There are arguably better looking cars in the same class (Seat Leon) but they do not for me anyway have the balance between practicality, value and fun (in a vRS sort of way)

I hate the look of crossovers and SUV with a passion, and will always pick a traditional car over them. The Mk III isn't the most beautiful car out there, but it isn't offensive to look at either. Perhaps not what I'd pick if I had an unlimited budget, but I can certainly live with it.

 

But I have to say I'm in the opposite camp when it comes to HUDs, I'd love to have one. One less distraction for the driver, when you don't have to look down at the instrument cluster for navigation info etc. Unfortunately they're still pretty rare in this price range.

I miss the HUD of the Prius we had before getting the Octavia. It showed speed, navigation info & optionally, hybrid power (Prius equivalent to a rev counter I guess). But I prefer the Octavia in every other way :sun:

Personally I prefer the looks and the practicality of the hatch, it looks like a saloon but has the benefit of a decent opening of the hatch to get stuff into it unlike many saloons that have large boot space but have a letter box opening to load it. 

Agreed. I recall the first time on my Mk. 2 hatch that I put the rear seats down and took out the shelf, to get the remains of an old garden fence down to the local tip.  I estimated at least two, possibly three trips.

I started loading up the boot and when the whole lot was in I could have still got at least half as much again into it!! One trip did it easily.