Octavia vRS - opinions and alternatives?

[Timmay0]

The time has come to get rid of my big, slow, diesel mondeo, and to replace it something a bit more fun. My requirements are:

Budget approx £10k
Petrol
Fairly quick
Needs to be big enough to carry 2 small children (plus accompanying pushchairs etc)
Back doors essential
Quite new (2010 or newer) - more the wife's requirement than mine

I've found that the Skoda Octavia vRS fits these requirements really nicely. I think the facelift mk2s look good, and the mk5 Golf GTi engine looks to give decent performance without going into the crazy money tax bracket.
Has anyone owned one of these, or can think of alternatives I might have missed?

[kambites]

We've got a mk2 Octavia VRS as a family wagon, albeit a pre-facelift one.

It's... OK. Does everything reasonably and nothing badly. It does nothing exceptionally well either except possibly carry stuff - the boot is pretty enormous for the class of car. Reliability has been mediocre, but probably about what you'd expect of a modern VAG car. In two years we've had a fuel pump fault (it carried on working, just turned the MIL on); air conditioning compressor and condenser failure (possibly related but I can't see how); an intermittent fault with one of the door locking modules; and a few consumables such as suspension bushes have gone. The sat nat also doesn't work but that's OK because it's complete rubbish anyway.

The wife (whose car it is) loves it and I'm not too upset when I have to drive it.


We test drove a Golf GTi and it felt very similar. You can't really feel the difference in length from the drivers' seat and I couldn't see any difference in the quality of the interior. The Golf was slightly quieter, I suppose that's where Skoda saved their money. All in all we felt the Skoda was the better car.

Edited by kambites on Friday 22 August 09:08

[Pepperami]

We have a petrol vRS at work and it's a cracking car. Not as quick as some on a straight but handles really well and on the streets or anywhere technical it's brilliant. Our cars don't get the easiest of lives either but reliability has never been an issue at all.

Edited due to stupid kindle autocorrect

Edited by Pepperami on Friday 22 August 11:41

[Timmay0]

Thanks both for the input. Reliability sounds not brilliant, but I suppose that's what you get with any slightly older car.

[kambites]

Timmay0 said:

Thanks both for the input. Reliability sounds not brilliant, but I suppose that's what you get with any slightly older car.

All of the bits which have failed are generic VAG, nothing Skoda specific has gone wrong (with the possible exception of the sat nav which I think just needs recalibrating but I neither know nor care whether that's possible). Perhaps we've been a little unlucky but my perception is simply that VWs are particularly reliable any more.

[GoodDoc]

kambites said:

Timmay0 said:

Thanks both for the input. Reliability sounds not brilliant, but I suppose that's what you get with any slightly older car.

All of the bits which have failed are generic VAG, nothing Skoda specific has gone wrong (with the possible exception of the sat nav which I think just needs recalibrating but I neither know nor care whether that's possible). Perhaps we've been a little unlucky but my perception is simply that VWs are particularly reliable any more.

Surprised to hear about your reliability issue, granted my Octavia is diesel but with the exception of an interior cabin light and a faulty battery, both replaced under warranty, all mind has needed over the last six years has been service items and a couple of seals (driveshaft and charge hoses), but despite a 60 miles a day commute over the last six years mine has led a fairly easy life.

The Sat Nav is a rebranded VAG item as well, but as you pointed out, it's not very good. I had a play with one in the dealer and decided it wasn't worth the extra money or spec bump. The boot is freaking huge, I know the Octavia is longer than the MkV Golf it's based on but it feels twice as large as the boot on the Golf.

[kambites]

Both of the air conditioning failures are apparently very common, although not as common as the ESP control unit failure which blights all of the VAG cars of this era (along with a fair number of other German cars).

The fuel pump doesn't seem to be a common problem but I'd guess it was just a sensor failure because the pump was still pumping fuel, it was just turning on the MIL.

[mwstewart]

Excellent VFM and as above very little to seperate them from VW now, aside from the badge.

Would you consider a remap? That will make it a lot more interesting.

[ManOpener]

AC compressor faults are common and can repeat themselves if the replacement isn't the OEM Sanden unit, which appears to have a much lower failure rate. This may have been sorted by the Octavia facelift but I've still seen some reports of Mk6 Golf failures.

ABS/ESP computer failure is a tricky one; I'm of the belief that cars which haven't had it happen won't have it, and those that have had it and it has been repaired may or many not again. It's gone from being circa £1k to repair down to about £200 so isn't that huge an issue. I'm also fairly certain that it was fixed by 2010.

There have been a few issues with chain tensioner failures on the EA888 engines. Mainly seems to affect 2009 cars. Can happen without warning and the net result is usually a new engine at enormous expense. Also some issues with bore scoring and high oil use with the same net result. Personally I think both of these issues appear more common on the internet than they actually are in real life.

[Timmay0]

mwstewart said:

Excellent VFM and as above very little to seperate them from VW now, aside from the badge.

Would you consider a remap? That will make it a lot more interesting.

How many engine-popping BHP can they get from a remap?

[kambites]

Timmay0 said:

How many engine-popping BHP can they get from a remap?

Claims of somewhere the 260bhp mark seem to be common. Whether they've been proven and/or have any effect on reliability, I wouldn't like to say.

To me, the VRS never really feels like it needs more power. It's fast enough in a straight line to never really feel underpowered, I suppose the term "nippy" is appropriate, but IMO the chassis balance and control feedback is really the limiting factor on the amount of entertainment you can have on most roads rather than the power output. The brakes, especially, are horrible; if I was going to spend money on improving ours, it would probably be on reducing the servo assistance of the brakes.

Edited by kambites on Friday 22 August 14:27

[blearyeyedboy]

Timmay0 said:

Thanks both for the input. Reliability sounds not brilliant, but I suppose that's what you get with any slightly older car.

Well, I've put 60,000 miles on mine and regular servicing aside, it's needed nowt more than an air mass sensor and to replace the rear windscreen washer jet. I wouldn't say it's first rate- kambites isn't one for melodramatics, so do heed his advice- but it's been a pretty painless ownership experience for me. Like he said, most of what goes wrong is the same for all the VAG ranges. My impression is that irritating things go wrong but it's very durable. (I used to work for an out of hours medical group that had Octavia diesel estates that had a much harder life than my petrol vRS hatch and they wore the miles relatively well compared to other pool cars.)

It's not a thrill a minute but if you want something with a very big boot that entertains periodically then there's little to match it. When mine gets put out to pasture I'll probably look at Focus ST estates.

EDIT: And I totally agree with kambites about handling balance. It's OK but limits you much more on winding country roads than the power does.

Edited by blearyeyedboy on Friday 22 August 14:37

[kambites]

Yeah I wasn't trying to imply that it's a particularly unreliable car. I think we've been a little unlucky and the Octavia is probably an entirely average car, along with the rest of the VAG products. I wouldn't expect them to match a Civic or a C'eed and, in my experience, they don't but that doesn't mean they're bad. Modern cars are complicated things and when they're ten years old things go wrong.

I think the fact it's been vastly more expensive to run than my older Lotus makes you realise that the conventional wisdom about brands' reliability needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

I'd happily buy another one if we had reason to.

Edited by kambites on Friday 22 August 14:41

[anonymous-user]

My 2008 has been 100 % reliable and @ 5 years is the longest I've owned any car which tells you something .
One drawback is lack of sound proofing . Hopefully addressed in later models. Go for a proper test drive on typical UK roads and listen for this. I believe that's where Skoda cut corners in my case..

[Timmay0]

kambites said:

Claims of somewhere the 260bhp mark seem to be common. Whether they've been proven and/or have any effect on reliability, I wouldn't like to say.

To me, the VRS never really feels like it needs more power. It's fast enough in a straight line to never really feel underpowered, I suppose the term "nippy" is appropriate, but IMO the chassis balance and control feedback is really the limiting factor on the amount of entertainment you can have on most roads rather than the power output. The brakes, especially, are horrible; if I was going to spend money on improving ours, it would probably be on reducing the servo assistance of the brakes.

Edited by kambites on Friday 22 August 14:27

Thanks- remaps aren't something that I'd probably be looking at, but it's interesting to see what people are able to get out of the car.

[kambites]

I suppose I should point out that my takes on the brakes comes from constantly swapping between a completely unassisted setup on my car to VAG's notoriously over-assisted setup on the Skoda. If you're used to modern servo assisted brakes, it's probably only moderately bad.

[kambites]

Oh and if you do buy one, for god's sake avoid the 18 inch wheels. We've got them on ours and they're absolutely dire.

[ManOpener]

Timmay0 said:

mwstewart said:

Excellent VFM and as above very little to seperate them from VW now, aside from the badge.

Would you consider a remap? That will make it a lot more interesting.

How many engine-popping BHP can they get from a remap?

The big guys (APR/Revo) claim 260 on their own dynos. Most of the boutique rolling-road mappers say around 250, which tends to be proven on a rather large range of dynos. Not unheard of for people to be somewhat disappointed with the big-name stuff if they happen to be on a bit of a heart-breaker for a dyno day or the like.

Engines are pretty sturdy. They'll do 400 bhp/400 lb ft on standard internals and a hybrid K04 turbocharger. Though whether you'd want 400 lb ft through the front wheels on the standard open differential is a different matter entirely.

Avoid the 18" wheels as previously said. If you intend to do any regular hooning, an anti-lift kit is a must. http://www.awesomegti.com/awesome-anti-lift-kit-vw... or http://www.awesomegti.com/whiteline-anti-lift-kit-... Makes a big difference to composure during braking and acceleration out of corners. Plus the OEM bushes will probably be shot anyway.

Steering feel on all the Mk5 chassis cars is a bit rubbish. I've been looking to try the Powerflex steering rack bushes on mine to see if that improves things.

Edited by ManOpener on Friday 22 August 15:28

[GoodDoc]

ManOpener said:

ABS/ESP computer failure is a tricky one; I'm of the belief that cars which haven't had it happen won't have it, and those that have had it and it has been repaired may or many not again. It's gone from being circa £1k to repair down to about £200 so isn't that huge an issue. I'm also fairly certain that it was fixed by 2010.

This wasn't an issue on cars fitted with the simpler ASR system (Anti Slip Regulation), ASR just retards the throttle when it detects a loss of traction but the more advanced ESP system (Electronic Stability Program) uses the brakes to control each wheel to maintain traction.

To compound the problem VAG replaced failed ABS pumps with the same pump, with the same deign flaw, with predictable and £1,200+ results. Some clever chap with a spanner up North worked out how to replace just the failed component inside the pump for about £250.

[kambites]

It has to be said, the ESP system is pretty good (when it works).