Hi! I'm Ali from somewhere around the Southampton/Portsmouth Hampshire coast (not saying which as it's neither... )

I've been lurking for a while as My wife picked up a Fabia Mk III SE in Rallaye Green (Kermit!) last summer and it's been one of the most surprising cars I've ever been custodian of (lets face it, we never own these things, they are like cats... they let you look after them on their terms!)

it's a 1.2 4 pot 90BHP and I never thought I'd say such great things about such a 'small' engine. It's essentially been pulling double duty as our main car as my car was supposed to be able to fill in the role of doing bigger drives etc but it's not had a great year with a catalogue of issues that sprung up since october taking it off the road and losing confidence until the final nail in it's coffin came when on the way to the garage to check out a few issues it started a new "whine" which ended up being the alternator lunching itself... so the combo of things all cropping up at the same time has relegated it to the status of "project car" and as I don't have space, time, funds or energy for a project car right now, it's going to be someone else's project car... :'(

However that leads me to the second reason I've joined and that's due to acquiring a very low mileage ( 38K i.e. pensioner owned - gulp!) late '12 Octavia Mk2 Elegance in Dark Blue (Dynamic Blue?) and since it's missing a few options I'd have liked it to have had, I decided it was finally time to actually sign up - now that we're a 2-Skoda family...

Welcome to Briskoda @Ali-B My old neck of the woods (Bishopstoke/ Hedge End etc) and now I'm in a town in Germany twinned with Waterlooville

Nice @Lee01 ! which part of Germany is that? I'm not familiar enough with Waterlooville to know its twin towns... Wikipedia suggests Henstedt-Ulzburg which is not far at all from my favourite place in Germany: Hamburg (I did a year there on an Erasmus exchange)

30 minutes ago, Ali-B said:

Nice @Lee01 ! which part of Germany is that? I'm not familiar enough with Waterlooville to know its twin towns... Wikipedia suggests Henstedt-Ulzburg which is not far at all from my favourite place in Germany: Hamburg (I did a year there on an Erasmus exchange)

Schleswig-Holstein about 25Km or so from the centre of HH though I rarely go to the centre as it's a PITA unless you take the U-Bahn!

I basically lived in the centre. One stop out from HBF. Berliner Tor. I didn't have a car with me but a Student Bahn pass so S/U Bahn was my lifeblood!

But I guess when you live out of the city, it's a mare. I worked out of the city in Ahrensburg and had the reverse problem

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Ali-B

I should probably add, the Fabia is our first Skoda. I've flirted with the idea of a Skoda for years, never quite pulling the plug. in 2003 I was looking at various new at the time cars including Seat Leon, Octavia vRS, Honda Accord etc thanks to my company giving me a car allowance. I was going to give the vRS a go, but the Sales droid was the most hateful person in existence, essentially telling me to do one rather than let me try a vRS out. I ended up buying a MG ZS instead.

First Skoda but not first VAG car... I like the Idea of VAG cars but never seem to like ACTUAL VW's... the car replaced in the above car buying round was an Audi A4 Mk1 and nearly bought a MK IV golf TDI PD 130 in that hunt, but again, there was just something I didn't like about the Mk IV.

and finally, my first ever car was a facelift MK 1 Polo in ALMOST the same colour as the Fabia (except considerably paler in fact VAG technically sold the colour as a silver - and the paint code usually came back as an actual silver - Silber Grau - despite it should have been Silber Gruen. but i don't think VAG knew what consistency was in the 80's/90's 😂) but at any rate I find it amusing that the Fabia is essentially a Polo, in almost the same colour as my old Mk 1.5, and in all likelyhood, my son will learn to drive in it, if not have it as his first car when the time comes...

Assuming cars that old haven't been chased off the roads altogether by then!

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Ali-B