First and foremost forgive any spelling or grammatical mistakes, English is not my mother tongue. 

 

I will try to summarise as best as possible my experience on being an owner of a Skoda Fabia Mk3 for the past 10 months now, which I must admit has been quite a ride - literally.

 

I bought a 1.0 TSI DSG (Style)  with full specs apart from panoramic roof and radar cruise control in May 2018 for 15000 euros. Prior to purchasing the car I hadn't seen it nor driven it - I test drove a similar car with 15 inch wheels instead of 16 inch and found it smooth and quite comfortable so I decided to go for it. Again, I paid the full amount prior to seeing the car or driving it. The car was an ex demo one with 800 kilometers on the clock. 

 

The first few days of driving it I found it very uncomfortable. The suspension is raised (looks like a truck) and the seats (opted for the Sports seats) are basically wooden buckets. I immediately thought of changing the tyres to make it more comfortable. The car came with Bridgestone Potenzas (215/45r16) which I exchanged with 205/50r16. I sold the Potenzas for about the same price so that was okay. The ride quality improved only slightly. I tried decreasing the tire pressure (1.9 bar / 27.5 psi) which improved the ride even more but still very stiff. Mind you, the car is raised in the rear which makes stopping quite a task. When I lift my foot from the brakes it lurches forward quite aggressively, it always wants to go, which makes braking difficult too. I have also check for transportation blocks and they were removed. Eventually I gave up trying to improve ride comfort and learned to live it with. I call it: Playmobil car with wooden wheels. Nowadays the dashboard makes noises whenever I go over a small bump. The roads in my country and particularly in my city and quite good and well maintained. I can even feel road imperfections on the steering wheel. For example when I change lanes and I go over a line or when I go over a zebra crossing. 

 

Here comes the fun part. Upon taking delivery of the car I noticed some weird sounds coming from the gearbox (DQ200). For those of you that may be wondering the car's manufacturing date is January 2018. There were noises when downshifting, upshifting from 1st to 2nd gear and changing gears (R-D) while stationary. Over bumps the car made weird metallic noises as if metal plates hitting each other and sometimes after a bump would take it a second or so to find the right gear (don't know how else to explain it). Took it to the dealership garage and reassured me that everything was running as it should. The compared it to a 2017 Golf which made some slight gearbox noises (which could not be heard inside the cabin) but nothing too dramatic.

 

5 to 6 months in and the car started losing power and I started experiencing weird vibrations in the steering wheel and floor and it would sometimes make a weird grinding noise? that many have linked to fuel line? In the morning when I would start the engine it would make an irregular (random intervals) metallic noise. The car would also vibrate in low gears and revs and change gear too soon and lose power. The dealership blamed it on me for asking too much from the engine while going uphill. After reading some horror stories online, I suspected it could be the DSG. But hold your horses, the story gets even better.

 

A week ago (13500 kilometers on the clock), I decided to try and take it a Skoda dealership in another city and try my luck with them. Turns out, after they looked at it, that the flywheel is on its way out. They can fix it under warranty (5 years) but I am thinking of future costs and also resale value (Skodas depreciate at a fast pace in my country). Currently the car is valued at just under 9000 euros.

 

The dealership obviously denies taking the car back and if I would choose to take the "jurisdictional" road I would have to put my hand deep in my pocket and I am not willing to do that.

 

Currently I am thinking of ways to get rid of it. Absolutely terrible car. Bought it because I thought of Skoda are cars built to last but it turns out that's not the case with mine.

 

Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

 

Good report, so not the car for you.  You are as well to move onwards and upwards, or downwards as it seems you like.

Maybe you could say what the other cars you have owned and driven so that we know what you are comparing the Mk3 Fabia 1.0 TSI against.

 

Reading your other posts you seem to have got a Lemon and Skoda & the Dealership seem to have not resolved faults with your car.

When your car was a couple of months old and at 4,000 km matters should have been dealt with when you reported them.

Then this.

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/454557-fabia-mk3-dq200-clunk

Funnily having re-read this @Estate Man has also jumped ship from being a Mk3 Fabia owner.

 

Edited 7 March, 20197 yr by Skoffski

Sorry to hear about your problems!

 

I had issues with an 2011 Skoda Fabia and my local dealership that serviced the car were relatively unhelpful. Once it had been serviced, the car had a 12 month parts and labour warranty, and it went back into them 3 times in as many months with a recurring EGR valve issue. it went through 3 valves and I was blamed for the faults (it did 60 miles on the motorway a day). The car would be in with Skoda for a week or so, and I'd have to pay for hire cars.

 

The dealership manager/service manager weren't the friendliest of people and flat out refused to offer any reimbursement for hire cars, and in the end I got Skoda Head office involved and things moved a lot quicker in terms of car turnaround and updates. I never paid for any of the work Skoda did on the vehicle (which went into several thousand pounds in the end) but getting head office involved certainly benefitted me.