The Skoda Files Part II

Take a high-efficiency turbocharged petrol engine, a'trick' automatic gearbox that's more economical than a manual, mix it with matt black and almost painfully discreet styling and what have you got? Anything from a Seat to an Audi, really.

In this case what we're talking about is a Skoda Octavia, which is what I shelled out on when this blog came back to life a few months ago. Its arrival marked the end of a long association with that middle class cliche the Volvo V70 and the start of life with a badge which - along with Lada, Wartburg and Trabant - used to be the butt of all joke about east European technology.

Not anymore. As the standard kit-list suggests, Skoda today is a confection picked from the Volkswagen Group parts bin, which it became part of a few years back. So while it's still built in the Czech Republic, its design and engineering are very much based on VW's bid for world domination (for which read 'attempt to dominate the market for mainstream cars').

So if you can get over the badge what you are basically buying is the extendable chassis system also found underneath VW's Golf and Passat, Audi's A3 and TT and the Seat Leon. Ditto the 1.4 TSi turbo petrol engine and the seven-speed DSG twin-clutch auto gearbox. It's the same story inside, with upmarket plastics, familiar displays and switchgear and and information/entertainment system which clearly shares its interface with VWs and Audis.

Having squinted at the Passat and goggled at its price, I got over the Skoda badge and went for an Octavia, a car which offers nearly all the refinement you get from its upmarket sibling but at a daft price. It's a sizeable car and while it falls short of a V70's seats-down boot space, it has noticeably more interior space.

More to the point, it's far more economical to run. My 2.5 turbo petrol Volvo struggled to get much more than 25mpg, and got a ritual thumping when time came to pay the car tax, which was edging up to £300 a year when I cried enough. The Octavia? Its light weight, muscular engine and remarkable gearbox mean it just about matches the Volvo's pace but thrashes it for economy: 3,000 miles in, I'm averaging 46mpg.

And I'm not paying any car tax, either, the Octavia qualifying for zero in its first year, £30 a year after than. Or it did until George Osborne realised new car buyers weren't giving him anything and announced that more "realistic" levels of car tax are on the way.

Anyway, it is a remarkable car. For what's meant to be VW's value brand, it is quiet, refined, well-equipped (climate control, multi-mode gearbox, decent in-car entertainment - they're all there) and screwed together in the way you'd expect for a VW-in-drag. The DSG gearbox is the stand-out performer, and for anyone who's not lived with this twin-clutch marvel the speed and smoothness with which it shifts gears has to be experienced to be believed.

I'm not blind to the stunt VW has pulled here. At eye level, its interior finishes are beautifully restrained and almost upmarket. Below that, where the eye doesn't wander too often, they are hard plastic. Its styling is, of necessity, less striking than a Passat. And I chose a model with the tallest possible tyre profile because the torsion-beam back axle was a cost-saving design choice which means it doesn't soak up bumps the way an Audi does.

I suspect a more sophisticated suspension system would have left even more people wondering why they'd pay a VW price. The key question is how well a value brand stands up to three years of family use. So watch out for the next instalment...

Petrol. Turbo. Automatic. And a bloke who drives like a snail.

The blog gets back into gear!

For a daily hack this is a shame-faced admission: this blog has been dormant for nearly a year.

May be it's a measure of the way the world's picked up speed in the last 18 months or so, may be it's a reflection of the competing demands of work and family life, but there's been so much other stuff going on that filling a quiet moment with yet more wordsmithery has been the last thing on my mind. I think a few other bloggers have felt the same way.

Enough of the excuses and back to business, for that's what this blog is: a mix of musings on business which don't fit the template of the day job and musings on stuff that I find interesting - my business, if you like.

So we'll get back into gear with some of the latter. Quite literally, infact, as this blog marks a farewell to the trusty old warhorse that is my Volvo. Affectionately known as Kurt (as in Wallander, the Swedish detective), it's the kind of car that conforms to the classic Volvo cliche: a big, lumbering but always dependable V70 estate. Adding further to that veneer of endearing respectability is the fact that it's also a family hand-me-down, having spent the first few years of its life ferrying my wife's aunt and uncle to and from golf clubs in Surrey.

It had got a modest 60,000 miles on the clock when I got my sticky paws on it and dragged it up to Nottinghamshire. It will be traded in a couple of weeks from now with 111,000 on the counter. It's in good nick, so I'd reckon that there's another 100k in it with some careful fettling.

Much as I've enjoyed wafting around in something that's like a pair of old slippers, it's now a car from another era. It's big, heavy, has a large turbo petrol engine and a five-speed automatic slushbox. It's been great for cruising around in...but 200bhp in a heavy car is painfully expensive to run.

How painful? Try this: urban fuel economy is 18 mpg. Car tax is closing in on £300 a year. And its age (first registered in 2001) means it's had to have new hips and kneecaps. I still love it to bits. But it's probably time to pass it on to someone who doesn't do so many miles.

And time for me to take advantage of the huge technical leaps and bounds that have taken place since my V70 first hit the road.

Just how much motoring efficiency has improved can be seen in Kurt's replacement. Its petrol turbo engine is a litre smaller and 60bhp less powerful. The car itself takes up just as much road space as the V70. But its urban fuel economy is more than 46 mpg. Its 134mph top speed is the same as the Volvo. And its emissions are such that in the first year I will hand over no car tax whatsoever to George Osborne, and only £30 a year after that. Whoopee!

That astonishing performance is partly down to the fact that the car is significantly lighter than the Volvo, but also because of a remarkable automatic gearbox known as DSG. This Double Shift Gearbox has seven speeds and not one but two clutches.

In a normal gearbox, the clutch has to disengage itself from one gear and then engage the next, which takes time and uses juice. With the DSG, the first clutch engages one gear, while the second is already lining up the next cog. Shifts happen in milliseconds and the end result is that the auto version of this car is more economical than the manual.

The car also has a few other gizmos which weren't around when my V70 first hit the tarmac. The brakes come on automatically if the car detects an impact, a fatigue sensor sounds if the car spots odd steering inputs, multimedia is controlled via touchscreen, there's even a driving mode selection which allows you to tailor climate control, engine torque, accelerator, power steering and gearbox to suit your own needs. There's also self-parking system on some models.

So, I'm obviously a lucky boy and the posh gods have smiled on me, right? Wrong. One of the biggest changes to have taken place over the past 10-15 years is that some of the badge snobbery that used to decide your pecking order in life's traffic jam has faded, replaced instead by a respect for smart choices.

In other words, this technical marvel is a Skoda.