Premium luxury hatch - creates its own segment . Review on Skoda Fabia - Diesel

I posted this original review on carwale.com and found to my shock that another user "nayankibliwala" had copied parts of it here as his own review - so I thought I would post my original one here.

I finally made it to the Autograph Andheri showroom today for a test

drive - they had a Classic Diesel model - and have the following

observations.

Superb car, feels luxurious inside, very spacious inside and in the bootBoot

has "high lip" - a design stupidity affecting many cars these days,

which makes it difficult placing large suitcases inside and results in

feeling of smaller boot space.

We are not a diesel family -

so when the car was stationary and at low speeds, you can notice the

"put-putting" and slight vibration that goes with diesels.  At higher

speeds, this doesnt become noticableThe diesel engine is superbly responsive and accelerates fantastically - better than you might find even in petrols.

The petrol engine will be even more peppy and faster - will be a real quiet, performance, luxury hatchback.

Diesel

models have special filters which apparantly mean even if you leave the

fabia without running for a couple of weeks you wont have trouble, and

this also means you dont necessarily need to drive 50 kms/day to get

the best returns out of this car - but the diesel is 80k more expensive

than the petrol.   I have yet to technically verify this claim.

Inside the car gadgets and cubbyholes are all very goodSince

this was the classic model, we could not adjust the seat height

position.   In this model we found that we couldnt see the front lip of

the car bonnet - in the ambient and elegance models the car seat height

is adjustable, so this would help having a higher sitting positionSkoda

is out of production capacity until its new production line at

Aurangabad comes online n March.  So they are only able to produce 21

cars per month according to the dealer.The dealer is not even confirming delivery period for the available models immediately, will "get back to you".Dealers

have bought the early cars themselves, customizing them and selling it

for 1-1.5 lacs on top of the ex-showroom prices - off the shelf - and

these are being gobbled up by the noveau-rich - we saw 2 being sold

todayOther petrol variants will be available only after March - currently only Elegance model is quoted in PetrolGround

clearance issue - the spec says _minimum" ground clearance is 146 mm -

and this is in the FRONT, not between the wheels - here the clearance

is a more normal 160 mm or so.  The chassis is at normal height, but

the way the bonnet and the bumper is designed - results in 'low minimum

clearance" - so this is really not an issue.

If one wants even more clearance, can go for 15 inch alloy wheels, standard is 14 inch.

So

while overall this is a fantastic car - India's only premium luxury

hatchback, you will have delivery problems until March when things will

start smoothing out.