Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advise about buying a used car. I've recently got a new job that means I can move out of my parents house. Currently I'm driving an 07 Fiesta 1.4 TDCI, but it's not just my car - it's shared with the rest of my family. Because of this, I'm needing to buy a car as soon as possible as I can't really keep the fiesta 200 miles away from home indefinitely! (plus I hate it's lack of power - 67bhp, it handles well but overtaking in it is an art...) I'm going to be doing a lot of driving, and I'm only 20 so I need something with good fuel economy, cheap to buy, cheap to insure and ideally a bit of poke. Oh and I could do with it being an estate as in the Fiesta I have to strap all sorts to the roof, which isn't ideal. I know this sounds like an impossible combination of requirements, but with a lot of research it seems that a Fabia or an Octavia fit the bill fairly well.

 

I need to choose between the two. I've pretty much definitely decided I'm after a 1.9TDI. Looking at the insurance costs, there's only a couple of hundred between a Fabia 100 and an Octavia 130, so there's no real problems there. I'm hoping to have saved about £1500 within the next couple of months, but cash is tight so the lower the price the better. 

 

Because of the limited amount of cash, looking on Autotrader it looks like the lowest mileage I can get for that is about 140k on either a Fabia or Octavia (with service history, I'm not bothering with anything without any service history).

 

So, to get to the question, will either of the two be likely to be more reliable after doing that kind of mileage, or is there very little in it? I've heard of Octy's doing 400k miles plus, but I've never heard of Fabia's lasting that long...

 

If anyone's got any suggestions then please let me know!

 

Thank in advance,

Toby

Hi, when we were looking for our Skoda like you we did a bit of research (Autotrader, Preloved, E-Bay etc etc), we ended up on e-bay but this took months because we were waiting for the right motor at the right price. If you are in a hurry you will probably buy the wrong car. If it was me I would go for the Octavia because like you I have not heard of many Fabias doing the mileage (no reflection to Fabia owners). Ours is a 1.9 and the drive and torque is just fine. Hope this helps

Welcome

 

If it was my money then I would buy exactly what I bought for my 1st Škoda .... MKI Octavia Elegance 110BHP, pretty nippy for what it is and amazing economy for the size of car (close to 60MPG) 

 

The boot is massive so unless you need the extra height in the boot then an estate just isn’t needed (I got a std size wardrobe in the boot... with the hatch closed!) 

Thanks for the replies, I think I'll be going for an Octavia then! Interesting point about the size of the boot on the hatchback, I hadn't considered that it would probably be big enough for what I need.

All i can say Octy 130 bhp  11 years old and 205 k miles , still no oil use other than normal top up , pulls mega , make sure full service history and the Cambelts done every 60k miles , although they can go on longs ervice schedule ie 20k miles , i have been doing my oil changes every 10k miles over last 5 years , 

Sounds great, if I find a nice high mileage Octy I think I'll go for it - not going to rush into it, hopefully a really good one will show up over the next couple of months