Skoda Octavia Estate

[houseargh]

Going to view one this weekend. It's 2013 with a 1.4l engine.

I know Skoda ranks high for reliability and it should be great spacewise. From browsing various other threads on here, I don't know if we should be concerned that 1.4l is not enough engine size for a car that big, as quite a few people are talking about going for 2.0l (possibly out of our budget as this is at the upper end for us). I know that the technology has improved over the years so that you need less engine size on a bigger car than you used to, but not sure if 2013 is new enough for that!

If you have similar, any feedback much appreciated!

(We mostly do fairly short drives close to home but do London to Manchester every six weeks and plan to take it on family driving holidays eg. down to France in a few years time, so there is some chunky motorway driving in the mix)

It’s not really an opinion. The fact you think a chipped Defender with maybe 170bhp is stupidly fast tells me you’ve never even been in fast car let alone driven one. A fast car these days does 0-62 in 3-4 seconds, I doubt a mildly tuned Defender would be able to crack 10. That’s not a failing though, they’re obviously not about straight line performance.

OP we are in a similar situation looking around for small estates etc.

We have considered the Octavia. When we test drove a 1.4 it felt fine on the dual carriageway and around town - as good as our current 1.9 Scenic diesel

We do around 6000 miles a year - 2000 of which is our annual holiday usually France/Germany, the rest around town and monthly longer drives.

Looking at around the £9-10,000 mark we have found a reasonable number of Octavias around even up to 2018 if we go for higher mileage cars. Friend who knows about these things says that as long as the car has been regularly serviced and tyres etc replaced at recommended intervals high mileage is better as we will get a newer car that has done lots of motorway miles rather than older car with low around town mileage. Only issue to check is how worn seats are and general condition of interior.

Other cars we have looked at are the VW Golf estate which is basically the same car as the Octavia but feels a bit more 'classy' but not sure if thats worth £1000 more!

We are also trying to look at Peugeot 308 estate and Renault Megane estate before we make a choice.

Theres also of course plenty of Astra and Focus estates around. DH is tempted by fancy Mercedes, Audi and Jaguar estates which are in the same price range but these are older and (probably) more expensive so I'm not so keen.

So what did you decide in the end? My further thoughts about Octavia is how many of them there are around - must be a good car as very popular, also very common as taxis around us which shows they must be fairly reliable.

My previous octavia lasted 20yrs and no major repairs required just the usual tyres, brakes and one battery change.

Would of carried on for plenty more yrs but had to get rid of it due to upcoming ulez ..and bought a 2019 skoda 😆 just couldn't find another car that matched what an octavia offers in thst price range

They are solid reliable cars. Plenty of boot space and leg room, dont cost much to repair. Not bad on fuel economy.