The new Skoda Fabia is a handsome little car, as indeed my colleague Mr. Briscoe is discovering this week, but when you take a small hatchback and convert it into an estate a lot of that character can be lost. However, this is not the case with this new Fabia Combi (that's estate in non-Skodaese) thanks in part to the fact that this new model is lower than its predecessor giving it a less awkward stance.
As you would come to expect from a Skoda estate there is plenty of storage: 530 litres (without the spare wheel in place) that can be expanded up to 1,395 litres, which enables it to veer very close to obtaining Tardis-like status.
What might surprise more is how sweet the 1.2-litre TSI petrol engine is. If you're just going to do short trips here and there and not weekly cross-country commutes then it is certainly the engine to plum for. At 6.0 litres/100km it's not ground-breaking in terms of fuel economy, but nor does it embarrass itself. The 1.4-litre diesel gives a better return in that respect but it does make an awful racket doing so. It's actually a little disappointing at just how unrefined Skoda has left that diesel engine feeling in a car that is otherwise rather nice.
Key tech specs:
- 1.2-litre TSI petrol engine
- 90hp and 160Nm- 107g/km
- Band A3, €190 per annum
- 6.0 litres/100km (47.1mpg)
- 0-100km/h in 11 seconds
- Fabia Combi 1.2 TSI starts at €15,595 (1.0-litre MPI starts at €14,795, 1.4 TDI starts at €18,995)