► CAR lives with an Octavia Estate
► Plenty of technology to test
► A-ff-C reports on life with the new Skoda
We do enjoy having an estate car parked in the diminutive herringboned divot that is the driveway of ff-C Towers. Especially now that the much vaunted look-over-walls height advantage bestowed on SUV owners has been effectively nullified by the sheer number of them careering around.
The last word in driving dynamics is not, frankly, anywhere near the top of the missus’ list of essential ingredients in a car. But she has been shouting at CAR long-term test cars for long enough now to appreciate a truly spacious family machine that does not roll like a Labrador presented with fox poo at every whiff of a corner. Especially when she has her own evil-smelling example of same curled up astern.
So it’s to the Octavia’s credit that it manages to shackle bodyroll so adroitly while still delivering properly cushy levels of ride comfort that I struggle to remember finding in anything else similarly sized and priced of late.
The in-gear performance offered by a 2.0-litre turbodiesel making just 148bhp is far superior to that suggested by bald 0-62mph statistics. And the vim with which the Skoda tackles 30-50mph acceleration not only speaks volumes for this proven combination of engine and DSG gearbox, but also highlights the excruciatingly slow average speed of the average Mudfordshire tourist.
Despite all of these attributes, however, regular readers will know that life with the Octavia has not always ticked the bed-of-roses box. The missus’ ire was first triggered by the early onset of a rattle which not even Skoda’s mechanics could eliminate.
By the time the elder hooligan had resolved that with a well-aimed fist to the ceiling console, the reversing alert was doing its best to remove her head from her shoulders by slamming on the anchors every time she backed out of the drive, over-sensitive to overhanging plants. I did suggest this could be avoided by riding the brake in reverse to fool the system, but by then we had the additional vexation of Laura, the over-matey voice assistant who – until stabbed to virtual death by random touchscreen abuse – would seemingly Never. Shut. Up.
Surely no one makes a Friday car any more. But when I recently caught a Golf GTI malevolently aping the Skoda’s poltergeistish habit of surreptitiously moving the windscreen wipers to the vertical when left unattended, I did begin to wonder if the VW Group might genuinely be suffering from an attack of Friday software technician…
All of which is a real shame, because what we have here is a comfortable, practical, spacious, adequately swift, immensely frugal and essentially sound machine fighting to get out from behind a raft of gently idiotic software which turns the simple pleasure of living with what should be a foolproof car into a gritted-teeth festival of Tourettes-laden tomfoolery.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 49.6mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.8p per mile
Miles this month 393
Total miles 6705
Month 8 living with an Octavia Estate: back on speaking terms
Late in their feisty relationship, the missus and the Octavia are back on speaking terms. This entirely welcome volte face may be attributed to two small incidents…
Firstly, the younger hooligan emerged from the disturbingly sticky swamp of his bedroom for long enough to accidentally find out how to switch Laura – the on-board assistant – off. What else he may have inadvertently switched off in the process is anyone’s guess.
Secondly, the missus has discovered the tab on the climate control screen labelled ‘Fresh Air’. ‘Now THAT,’ she growled cheerfully, ‘is what a menopausal woman wants to see…’ Trust me, it’s what a menopausal woman’s husband wants to see too.
Nothing highlights the shortcomings of exciting touchscreen control replacing simple knobs more than a need for the driver’s side of the car to remain at a constant 19º while the passenger domain is forced through a succession of temperature variations more rapid than those endured by the man trying to stay upwind of a large bonfire in a cold, flukey wind.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 49.6mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.1p per mile
Miles this month 304
Total miles 6312
Month 7 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: superior intelligence
Life with the Octavia continues to cosset and confound in equal measure. Only this morning the missus dropped me at the office before putting considerable distance between car and key (our only one) still residing in my coat pocket. ‘No. Everything’s fine. Just don’t switch off the engine, and come straight back…’
And when the humans aren’t cocking things up, the car displays a mischievous streak. Unattended and off, it has now taken to humorously raising the wipers to the vertical when no one’s looking, requiring amusingly random flailing of the wiper stalk to talk them down again.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 49.8mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 7.8p per mile
Miles this month 425
Total miles 6008
Month 6 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: the end of the affair
Oh Lordy; how annoying Laura, the Octavia’s voice-activated assistant, has become. Last month, after an initial flurry of oft-rebutted experimental directives, I gleefully listed Laura’s reluctance to butt in unbidden as one of her primary merits. Alas, the very next day I climbed aboard and – a hallmark of those for whom smoking long ago sloshed eagerly across the tar-laden moat that separates hobby from habit – unleashed a single, rewardingly phlegmatic cough… ‘How Can I Help?’ enquired Laura before – without so much as a by your leave – turning the heating up one degree on the passenger side.
Indeed, once initially woken from her slumber by half an hour’s tomfoolery with the elder hooligan a few weeks ago, Laura is proving to be something of a light sleeper; materialising like an irritating genie who can’t wait for the requisite lamp-fondling frippery before popping by to maliciously misunderstand your latest wish.
Only this morning, while bumming a lift to the office from the missus, our amiable chatter about the relative merits of red and green Thai curry was interrupted mid-bamboo shoot by a ‘What can I do for you..?’ ‘NOTHING’, snarled the missus coquettishly. ‘Sure’, said Laura. ‘I’ll demist the windscreen for you.’
And we’ve struggled more than somewhat to fathom that which blows her frock up; having established only that anything phonetically similar to ‘OK Laura’ ain’t it. The successful list of random reactants so far includes that cough, a twin-engined Cessna departing London Oxford airport, the anti-rattle thump of fist on Octavia roof-lining, any number of the missus’ expletives, and the crunch of one of Dylan Moran’s excellent Beetroot & Vertigo flavoured crisps.
Mercifully, emissions from neither the radio nor the evil-smelling dog have yet attracted Laura’s over-attention, but one can’t help feeling it’s only a matter of time.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (as tested £32,960)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 47.5mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 7.6p per mile
Miles this month 321
Total miles 5583
Month 5 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: it’s a lorra Laura laughs
I have decided to throw caution to the wind and see if we can’t short-circuit the diverse irritations of touchscreen control through the exciting new medium of Laura, Skoda’s voice-activated chamber maid, or digital assistant.
Three pleasant surprises straight off. Firstly, no button pushing is required to summon the serf; just say ‘Okay Laura’ and she’s at your service. Secondly, it doesn’t seem to matter how you pronounce her name; she readily answers to ‘Lowra’ or ‘Lawra’. And thirdly, at no point has she appeared unbidden. In a recent Mercedes the equivalent interrupted even at the mention of the sort of random assortment of words more usually associated with the front of a French T-shirt: ‘Orange, Terrapin, Suppository….’ ‘How Can I Help?’
On the downside, Laura’s control lexicon is, as yet, quite rudimentary; a wildly speculative spread of barked commands suggesting it is limited to authority over air-conditioning, navigation and the wireless. And she was unable to locate even one of the dozen or so coffee emporia cluttering this Mudfordshire market town; the technological equivalent of being unable to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cyl, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 46.6mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 7.3p per mile
Miles this month 202
Total miles 5262
Month 4 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: instanced by sensitive sensors
As posited from behind the sofa last month, the missus had indeed come over a bit ‘and I hate your shirt’ about the Octavia, despite the newfound quietness elicited by the deployment of a precision thump to the overhead console.
Her beef is with the safety systems’ propensity to activate automatic braking, with head-butting vim, if they sniff so much as a mouse scuttling into the opposite extremes of our Mudfordshire postcode.
Apoplexy has been regularly ignited by the Rear Traffic Alert reinventing itself as a Rear Triffid Alert every time she backs out of our vegetation-hemmed driveway. But what has really stirred sand into the Vaseline is the recent slamming on of the anchors by a front assistant faced with an oncoming vehicle on a lane which, though narrow, certainly doesn’t prohibit the perfectly amiable passing of two cars.
When someone whose main interest in a car is the ease with which you can turn on the seat heater and tune into your favourite poptastic radio station becomes sufficiently exercised by a safety system as to dub it dangerous, then surely Euro NCAP holds too much sway.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 47.4mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 8.4p per mile
Miles this month 402
Total miles 5060
Month 3 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: if in doubt, give it a clout
‘It sounds exactly like hairpins being dropped into a plastic teacup…’ Thus a woman explained the rogue noise her car was making to a bemused mechanic in a cartoon I recall from the days when every car squeaked, groaned and clattered its way down the road as a matter of course.
Indeed, back in the day, I had a chum whose dad wedged so much cardboard around the interior of his car to try to stifle unwanted noises off that the dash resembled an empty self-assembly wine rack.
I came to empathise later in life when the compressed-rhino-spore dashboard of my beloved MkII Golf GTI 16v rattled relentlessly. It was like that VW TV ad involving an interior squeak humorously traced to a popsy’s dangly earring, but a lot less cute. Once the local VAG spivs had said they could do nothing, it drove me to sell the car.
Hence, the arrival of an Octavia cabin rattle that sounds exactly like a giant bumble bee busying itself inside a foxglove has proved more than somewhat vexatious. And I’d forgotten how frustratingly difficult it can be to pinpoint the source of the disturbance in a cabin on the move.
Initially, I had it pegged as emanating from behind the dashboard beside the passenger door. Definitely. But then the elder hooligan joined me on board and determined that it was actually coming from my side of the cockpit. Definitely. When we finally compromised on a middle location we began to get warm, but only when the hooligan gave the overhead console ‘n’ sunglasses holder a speculative swat did the buzz that has been driving us quietly dotty for the last two months finally cease. Joy.
The only problem now is that the missus, who has always been a self-confessed liker of a Skoda, is on the cusp of turning against this one and now actively looking to find fault. Though, from the Octavia’s perspective, this is something of a pity, I suppose I should be grateful that said quest isn’t, for once, directed at me.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 48.9mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 10.9p per mile
Miles this month 253
Total miles 4658
Month 2 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: waving, not drowning
Well, a bit like yachting, since you ask. After the VW T-Roc R‘s puppy-on-a-leash propensity to attack any surface with all the vim of a 200bhp RIB, the Octavia estate goes about its business more in the manner of a tidily-sailed sloop, slipping easily along at a somewhat more leisurely and considerate pace over the worst our roads have to offer with a pleasing insouciance.
I’ll take the commensurate extra bodyroll. It’s by no means excessive and perfectly suits the car’s dynamic mission statement: ‘I can keep this up all day long at a quiet, comfortable and perfectly respectable lick. You may still want a stiff drink after 400 miles, but you certainly won’t need one.’
In other news, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the sole purpose of a lane-keep assist system is to prevent you from careering into the world’s grubbiest teddy bear attached to a vast radiator grille as you forage about the dashboard trying to switch the damned thing off.
Mercifully, though you do have to deactivate the Skoda’s system every time you climb aboard, there’s no touchscreen tomfoolery involved, merely two jabs of the right thumb. Not ideal, but better than most.
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (as tested £32,960)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 55.9mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 10.1p per mile
Miles this month 367
Total miles 4405
Month 1 living with a Skoda Octavia Estate: hello and welcome
Keeping up with the Joneses has never interested me much. But that’s clearly not the story at Skoda, where the tech message is: if you want to get ahead of them, you’d better buy an Octavia Estate.
It boasts five USB ports, but not as we know them; these are Type-C ports and, to the ff-C clan, about as much use as an ejector seat in a helicopter. A quick rummage round the homestead unearths three laptops, four diverse mobile phones, two iPads and one much fought-over PlayStation, all serviced by a veritable snake’s kindergarten of cabling universally tipped at one end with a USB Type-A fitting.
Apparently Type-C stuff has been around a while now, and I’m sure there are plenty of thrusting young executives with wafer-thin-mint-proportioned laptops who would settle for nothing less. But I know a woman who’ll settle for nothing less than being able to recharge her phone in the car, so the first thing I did on climbing aboard the Octavia was to climb straight out again and buy an adapter. Or four…
Having thus landed the tech Luddite custard pie with some vim, this SE L First Edition Octavia proves altogether kinder, and often rather clever, with the rest of its standard equipment list.
Please welcome, then: an umbrella – Rolls-Royce-style – in the driver’s door; an ice scraper under the fuel filler cap; mobile phone pockets on the front seatbacks; a funnel built into the screenwash tank lid; storage space for the luggage cover under the load-space floor (much to the disappointment of our shed); and four curry hooks built into the side walls of said load space to stave off the world’s biggest emergency slop.
The VW Group Virtual Cockpit is endlessly configurable, but the Classic format does the job well. With a digital speed read-out writ large in the middle, it rather negates the £690 optional head-up display, which the missus is only going to switch off anyway.
The infotainment screen is clear, fast and already infuriating. It may boast a touch slider along the bottom that can differentiate between one fingertip and two (volume and map zoom, since you ask), but scrolling through radio stations is fiddly even when stationary, hence destined to be a nightmare on the move.
‘Laura’, the voice-controlled digital assistant, sounds promising. I’ve yet to try her out, but we’re assured she’s bright enough to find me a decent curry in the area, and to differentiate between the driver’s and front passenger’s voices when responding to climate-control commands. Good job too, because the on-screen air-con control layout looks to be something of an intuition trip-hazard in waiting.
So there’s plenty to explore and examine, just as long as everyone can find a USB adapter to plug in their phone.
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
Logbook: Skoda Octavia Estate SEL First Edition
Price £29,515 (£32,960 as tested)
Performance 1968cc turbodiesel four-cylinder, 148bhp, 8.8sec 0-62mph, 137mph
Efficiency 52.3-60.1mpg (official), 56.2mpg (tested), 123-141g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.8p per mile
Miles this month 342
Total miles 4038