Sunday, January 10, 2010

A tempting offer?

Those who know me will understand that I am a convert to Skoda cars. When we first came to Spain I bought a Fabia much to the disgust of my daughters. It didn’t stop them getting a lift in it from the airport though nor did it stop them travelling around in it when they were here.

I traded the Fabia in for a Roomster to gain a bit more space and that is my current car. The offer the garage made on the new car was good but the the trade in price of the Fabia was a little disappointing. So, I hadn’t planned to change the car for a good few years. The distance I travel simply wouldn’t warrant it. My Roomster and I were set to grow old gracefully together.

However, last year Skoda introduced the Yeti and I was interested to see how it differed from my Roomster and more importantly would it offer me any advantages over my present car.

The Yeti looks to have the same front end as the Roomster which is borrowed from the new Fabia so I expected it to be similar in size. It turns out that the Yeti is 8cm taller thanks to its larger wheels and greater ground clearance, 11cms wider and 2cms longer. More important to me though, the wheelbase on the Yeti is almost 4cms shorter than the Roomster and without the versatile seating of my current car, the luggage capacity is restricted to its 416 litre boot.

The price on the poster might seem tempting until you realise that Skoda were offering the base model with the 1.2l petrol engine 2 years interest free on a loan of 10,000 € until the end of November last year. The roughly equivalent diesel model to my Roomster is an awful lot more expensive than that.

You can take it that I will not be visiting my local Skoda dealer any time in the near future.I might have considered the Yeti for a moment but now I have dismissed it.

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