Pillowy leather upholstery, check. Huge amounts of cabin and boot space, check. Low mileage, check. Low running costs, check. There’s no doubt that this week’s shed – a gen-one Skoda Superb diesel in top-spec (before the Laurin & Klement came along, anyway) Elegance format – ticks a whole heap of boxes even before you get to the £990 price.
Feeling suspicious about the mileage? Diesel Superbs are understandably much loved by suburban minicab drivers. As such, you might expect an 88,000-miler like this one to have lost a couple of hundred thousand miles somewhere, but the MOT records, unsquished seat bolsters and absence of vomit stains say different. If it is clocked, then someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble. Let’s assume it’s all pukka and move on to what you’d be getting here.
These first Superbs were basically stretched B5 Passats. Shed would live to regret going metric when he was talking about 10.4 centimetres to Mrs Shed in his courting days, but in imperial terms, that 4.1-inch advantage the Skoda had over the VW made a hell of a difference to passenger comfort.
The only thing that would make this car better from Shed’s point of view would be an old-time 1.9 TDI diesel under the bonnet rather than the 2.0 EA188 PD which in pre-2010 form suffered from its fair share of turbo, injector and cracking cylinder head issues (the letter you definitely don’t want to see on the right of the head underneath the fuel lines is ‘A’, and ideally not ‘B’). The chain from the balancer shaft to the oil pump might well fail, too, with disastrous consequences. Pre-2008 motors like this one weren’t common rail either, but as Shed’s then-new father in law shouted as he roared gleefully away from the wedding, you can’t have everything. On the plus side, the 140 didn’t have a pesky diesel particulate filter requiring expensive and inconvenient dealer regenerations.
When it’s healthy, the standard 2.0 diesel produces 236lb ft at a usefully low 1,900rpm, enough to get the 1,600kg Superb through the 0-62mph sprint in single figures and go on from there to just short of 135mph. Of course, all the usual go-faster options are available. Tuners will tell you that a 140 remapped to a 170 is less laggy than a standard 170, but if you go down that route you will need to look after the turbo. Fit a bigger turbo (from a 170, say) and you’ll be up to 200-220hp. For more than that you’ll need bigger injectors. The block will take up to 350hp but clutch slip will be an issue when the engine goes over 320lb ft. Moving the power band up or down the rev range by adjusting the cam timing is made easier on these engines by vernier pulleys, but again you need to be careful to get it just so. EGR delete is not worth doing on these engines, and replacing the (weakish) dual mass flywheel with a solid one is not a good idea if you want decent drivability.
Running costs for our shed as it stands would be very acceptable to most, with an official combined economy of 45mpg and an annual tax rate of £235. Watch out for blocked battery box drains that will soak your carpets and potentially cause a right old electrical munge-up with all the ECU and wiring tranklement that’s hidden there.
Shed had a Passat B5 with this problem. He’d go to indicate left only to see the nearside window going down. Attempts to beep dozy fellow motorists simply triggered the windscreen wipers, which in terms of putting his message across was hardly the same as a sustained blast of horn. Talking of battery boxes, Shed isn’t familiar with the underbonnet layout of the Superb, but if it’s the same as his old Passat then the (big) battery will be in a central position ahead of the scuttle. If you ever need to replace it, you’ll need the reach of a basketball player combined with the core strength of an Olympic pommel horse specialist. Having neither of these, Shed resorted to the age-old technique of swearing the job into submission.
There we have it, then. A nice looking Superb, if not a superb looking Superb thanks to a nearside rear scrape and what may be a dint on the bootlid, neither of which will be visible to you or your curry-carrying fares on a weekday evening.
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