Last week I began to notice a slight reluctance turning the steering wheel to the left. Then, after a lot of manoeuvring out of a tight parking place, the steering wheel refused to go more than 20 degrees to the left, and finally the ignition system failed. The AA patrolman I called discovered several generous handfuls of footwell compartment carpet underlay and insulation had somehow come adrift and wrapped itself around the steering column, finally yanking out the wiring from a couple of switches in the process. The dealer tells me he has never encountered a problem like this before - has anyone else here heard of it happening?

Not heard of anything like that on this forum before with the O3.

Would be interesting to know how the carpet became attached to the column in the first place.

 

Has the car been to a garage recnently for any work or did it come out of the blue?

Without inspecting the car I'm going on a "well calibrated guess".

 

I've never heard of this happening before on a Skoda, but it is possible for the carpet to get itself wrapped around the steering column if the one is out of position relative to the other.