What's outside today 34 - Skoda Fabia

This is a bit of a cheat - the Fab, as I like to call it, was actually a visitor to my drive shortly before Christmas but I've had a lot of non-car stuff to deal with lately, so I've only just got around to posting this.


Liked this one quite a bit - it's very big inside and very easy to get in and out of for a small car. The other thing I liked about this particular car was its three cylinder diesel engine. Not everyone likes the slightly raggedy beat these engines have but I'm a fan.


One or two things I wasn't so keen on where our particular test car was concerned. The rather drab green metallic paint didn't really show off the Fabia's styling to its best advantage - this model looks a lot better in lighter and brighter colours as these show up, for example, the black roof pillars better. Also, the mid-level '2' trim on the test car features a lot of light grey plastic; the cheaper '1' and more expensive '3' have an all dark-grey set-up that is a lot more tasteful.


The only real drawback of the Fabia, though, as I mentioned in my piece for The Verdict is that the larger Octavia - also an attractive car - is not much more expensive.

Fifty years of Trabants

Tomorrow is the fiftieth birthday of the former German Democratic Republic's most famous automotive product, the Trabant. This gives us a useful reminder that while capitalism isn't perfect, it at least provides us with an enormous choice of excellent cars at reasonable prices. Imagine being a car enthusiast in the GDR and having to wait years - or even decades - for the privilege of handing over your life savings for a piece of crap like the Trabant.

That said, it should also be borne in mind that the makers and designers of cars in the old planned economies of Eastern Europe operated under severe constraints. Access to certain materials and mainstream western parts suppliers was limited, while funding was restricted to what could be squeezed from the latest five or seven year plan in a system that emphasised the collective and communal over the sort of individual aspiration and ambition represented by car ownership. I still think that the Skoda Favorit, for example, which appeared in the then Czechoslovakia in 1987, and in western markets from 1989, was a remarkable achievement, given that it was close to being competitive with western cars of the time, despite being developed under these limitations. Certainly, it was good enough to get Volkswagen interested in the company, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, what made the Trabant famous wasn't its qualities as a car but its starring role in the film footage of the night the Berlin Wall came down - celebrated in this commemorative model, which I am sad to say, still sits on my mantelpiece gathering dust almost twenty years after the event.


Nevertheless, it's a pity that the grotty Trabant got the limelight when there were so many more interesting GDR vehicles - nothing you'd actually want to to have owned at the time, of course, but more interesting nevertheless. The Wartburg 353 for example, wasn't too bad when it was introduced in the mid-sixties, although it was hobbled by its two-stroke engine. The Barkas van occupied the same popular role in the GDR as the Ford Transit in the UK or the VW 'Bulli' van in West Germany, while East German trucks such as the IFA W50 and the smaller Robur were widely used not only in the domestic 'market' but in the Third World as well. The only East German brand that wasn't absorbed or closed after the Berlin Wall came down was Multicar, a manufacturer of very small vehicles for municipal use such as street sweeping. Anyway, more on some of this interesting stuff another time.

What's outside today 15 - Saab 93 BioPower

This is the BioPower version of the Saab 93. That means it can run either on normal unleaded or E85, a mix of 85% bioethanol and 15% unleaded. Externally, it's more or less indistinguishable from the standard model - apart, that is, from the enormous BioPower stickers attached to the sides of this test example.


Yesterday, I took it out on one of my favourite test routes - setting out from Cambridgshire to Norwich on the A11 before heading north to Cromer on the North Norfolk coast and than back home via Cley, Fakenham and Swaffham.

All jolly agreeable, and a route that allowed me to take in a stop-off at a Morrison E85 pump for a quick top-up - the one at the Norwich store, which lies within the shadow of the Carrow Road football ground, in fact.


Got back home in a good mood late in the evening, my head full of moderately warm thoughts towards the comfy, inoffensive if rather bare Saab. Made a cup of tea and casually picked up my copy of the delivery note for the 93 in order to take a closer look at it. What followed was the worst case of what Americans call 'sticker shock' I've had in connection with a Verdict test car since Ford sent us an admittedly very impressive Focus diesel estate about two years ago that had been specced up to the eyeballs for an on the road price of about 25 grand. The Saab - which I should, in fairness, mention is the priciest Vector Sport variant fitted with a few options like metallic paint - comes out at a scarcely believable GBP28,000.


I've always had a soft spot for Saabs and I'm a strong supporter of what the company is doing in promoting E85 with its BioPower models. But that price seems to be hopelessly ambitious to me. Remember that a Skoda Octavia is probably at least as well built as a Saab and, despite being Golf-based, is probably as roomy (in particular where luggage, as opposed to passenger space is concerned) as a 93. But Octavia prices start at about 11 grand; the deeply impressive and very rapid vRS estate version costs about GBP18,500.

Some other yardsticks - Mercedes C Class prices start at GBP23 thousand, BMW 3 Series prices at less than GBP21 thousand. And the Vauxhall Vectra estate starts at less than GBP16K - that's relevant because, as General Motors products, the 93 and the Vectra have quite a lot in common under the skin.

Cool Wall Fridge Magnets (2)

Now had a chance to put my Top Gear Cool Wall fridge magnets up.

In my 'Sub-Zero' category, I've got the Aston Martin V8 Roadster, the Alfa Spider, the Alfa 8C, the Skoda Roomster, the Porsche Cayman and the Ford Focus ST.

There are magnets for the presenters as well in the TG set. I'm afraid that while Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May are all brilliant at what they do, they are all in the 'Uncool' category on my fridge door. That's because they're all white middle-class, middle-aged men who are obsessed with cars - there's no way anyone who falls into this category (and I'd include myself in this) can regarded as cool. The mysterious Stig? Now that's a different matter - his magnet is in the 'Sub-Zero' section.

Praktik - a stylish Skoda for white van man

Discovered this on Skoda's international site - not sure if or when it's coming to the UK.


It looks as though what they've done is blank out the side windows on the Roomster; according to a report in the online version of the Financial Times Deutschland, the Praktik has a more basic spec and lower pricing. That should allow tradesmen who want something that's both practical and nice to drive to have their cake and eat it; perhaps the charming advertising campaign Skoda is running in the UK at the moment for the Fabia should have been held back for the Praktik.

More gap filling from SMMT test day

A bit more on the gaps I was able to fill at the SMMT test day last week.

First up, two cars which aren't quite personal top ten jobs like the MX-8 and Jaguar XJ diesel but are nevetheless excellent. One of these has been around for a bit while the other has only just hit British roads in the last few weeks.

The one that's been around a bit is the Subaru Legacy. A recent Verdict participant was telling me all about his the other week, so I made a point of trying one at Millbrook. It's a bit understated but great to drive, with its vice-free behaviour providing an excellent advertisement for the purity of Subaru's drivetrain concept, which involves mounting all of the major components as far as possible 'in line', including the boxer engine, which contributes to Subarus' low centre of gravity.


The Legacy brought back fond memories of the Subaru Forester XT which featured on the Verdict a couple of years back. That test was held in Newcastle and the surrounding area, and I still remember the Forester munching up the miles and attacking the roundabouts on the A1 with a lot more agility than you would ever guess from its rather staid upright appearance. The XT, in particular, is pretty special - it can accelerate as fast as a Boxster until you get up to the sort of speeds where the bluff bodywork starts to hold it back. I was able to confirm that the diesel boxer engine that Subaru showed at Geneva would start making it into various UK models towards the end of the year, with the Forester and the Legacy being the first to benefit, if I remember correctly. I've got high expectations of this engine - as well as opening up Subaru as an option to large numbers of company car drivers and economy-minded private buyers, the diesel boxer promises to sound very good too.

The new car was the second-generation Skoda Fabia. This has the same frontal styling as the Roomster but a daintier rear. The rave reviews this model has had so far seem to be justified - the quality and the design are excellent. The car I tried was the 1.2 litre petrol version, which has an engagingly throbby three cylinder engine that pulls very well for its size. I'm guessing it must be the same as the one fitted to the Urban Fox that featured on the Verdict last year.


A third gap filled was the Volvo S80. Not quite as exciting as the other cars mentioned here, but a fair enough effort and a respectable alternative to some of the mainstream German stuff. The one I tried had a rather ghastly interior colour scheme though; 'bright brown', if you can imagine that, just about sums it up.