I visited my local Skoda dealership yesterday and spotted in their showroom a brand-new Fabia wearing the much-loved (!!) perforated plastic "Aero Trim" covers on its alloy wheels. I mentioned this to a salesman saying that I thought Skoda had stopped fitting those covers to Fabias and he said they are, once again, standard fit on most Fabia models. (I also noticed that a brand-new Octavia VRS Estate had smaller 'infill' perforated plastic trims on its wheels.)

The salesman warned me that they had found the Fabia's plastic aero trims to be 'brittle' and that the workshop kept a few in stock just in case a trim broke if it needed to be removed to carry out a servicing/repair task.

Photo of Octavia VRS wheel here. (The plastic 'infill' trims are larger than I thought!)

I have them on my mk4 Fabia learned to live with them, but ones on Octavia VRS look awful, would hate to have the money for VRS and end up with them.

A photo of the VRS wheel without the aero trim

I'm not sure I like it any better and I'm reliably informed that removing the aero trim will increase fuel consumption by 10%. (Or was that 0.0010% ?)

If removing that plastic off the alloys has a 10% effect on fuel consumption, then every manufacturer would have been using steel rims and old style hub caps for the the last 20yrs, not putting heavier fancy alloys on their new models. Esp as that would bring emmissions figures down accordingly and so further improve their Euro compliance. Much easier than dodgy test detection ECU mapping..

without looking it up, I believe this “aero trim” (hubcaps…) idea started with Tesla ? Claiming it improved range on the cybertruck by some unrealistic amount.

I suspect Skoda love this constantly recurring topic as it diverts attention from the host of more important shortcomings in the Fabia 4.

26 minutes ago, bazz2004 said:

...the host of more important shortcomings in the Fabia 4.

I'd be interested in a list of "the important shortcomings" that you have identified.

We read the same threads but are coming from different places. Where I see discussions about problems with the Fabia 4 you see people who need to study the handbook or the digital version in depth.

The word "meretricious" comes to mind with the Fabia 4. Initially it seems very attractive but those first impressions are soon disappointed.

They are doing this on a lot of cars now, a money maker for them

The clocks have changed and I asked the wife to check the time shown on the Fabia 4 this morning. Just about everything in the house adjusts automatically but the Fabia 4 mc doesn't do it. Please, DerekU don't point me to the relevant page and sub section in the manuals that I need to study. The Fabia features AS (artificial stupidity) rather than AI.

Miles Škoda

How to Change the Clock in a ŠKODA – Miles Škoda

A quick video to show you how to change the clock in a ŠKODA. Taken in a ŠKODA Superb but the process is similar for many ŠKODA vehicles.

A few of the 'clocks' in my house automatically switch between GMT (UK winter time) and GMT+1 (UK summer time) but many do not. My 2009 Skoda Roomster's clock needs manual adjustment as do some of our kitchen applances' digital displays and all of our analogue watches' time-settings require altering when 'the clocks change'.

The Fabia Mk 4 does indeed have some mystifying non-intuitive features, but setting the date and time is not one of them. The procedure is touched on briefly in the Fabia Owner's Manual (paper and online versions) in the Infotainment sections, but = because it's easy to do - blow-by-blow instructions are not provided.

Edited 26 October, 202526 Oct by DerekU

Apologies to the person in question but I can't quite believe someone is getting worked up about having to change a clock twice a year. It's simple, takes seconds to do and probably needs doing to a lot of other things too.

This Wikipedia entry relates to Time in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Europe

It will be apparent from the Wikipedia map that travelling from the UK to another European country will normally involve a 'clock change' and, if a vehicle has a dashboard clock, that will need to be adjusted accordingly.

A Fabia Mk 4's clock is adjusted through its infotainment system (an "Amundsen" system in my car's case). This can be done manually (there's a simple 'toggle' between UK summer or winter times) or - as my SE L car has navigation - the GPS can be allowed to automatically select the appropriate time for where and when the vehicle is being driven.

(I remember ferry-crossing from the UK to France in a motorhome about 25 years ago. The crossing was in late March and I switched the vehicle's clock (and our watches) to French summer time just before we disembarked. The roads in France were surprisingly empty and all the shops in the villages we were passing through were closed. "Is this a French bank holiday?" I asked my wife, but the reality was that I'd got the clock change date wrong and it was two hours earlier in France than I anticipated.)