Post by ChrisM on Aug 26, 2019 12:58:11 GMT
Am back from 2 days in glorious Bonnie Scotland. Amazing sights, amazing weather and a great time apart from getting through security to board the homeward plane.
I arrived in Aberdeen about 10:30pm on Friday night so it was getting on for 11pm when I got to the rental desk for what should have been a "Hundy" i30.
When I was asked if I was OK with an automatic, I sensed that maybe a free upgrade was on the way, most likely due to a shortage of cars as they were very busy (despite pre-booking.... I never understand why this happens and it's not the first time I have had issues with a pre-booked car not being there).
Anyway - a Skoda key was produced for me so I made my way into the car park looking for my marked bay - a nice gleaming blue Octavia. Looking at Skoda UK's website this appears to be "SE Drive" spec.
God job I know my way around the norther parts of Aberdeen as it had no sat-nav and mine had died of a flat battery on the plane journey (it must have turned itself on) and I did not have its cable to hand and didn't want to delay my short trip to the hotel any further by getting my phone out and programming the destination into it.
It felt quite a big car - wide as well as long and the interior was a nice-enough place to be, although the aluminium trims on the door cards look out of place; black would have been better but just leaving it as patterned plastic like the rest of the trim may have been better still.
Not too much steering feedback but it was light and direct. Ride quality was generally very good although some rough surfaces did cause undue bumpiness in the cabin, and some road surfaces also caused a very high level of tyre noise.
The 7-speed DSG gearbox was good too, providing engine braking on gentle downhill slopes and only requiring manual over-ride to slow on steep slopes. There was plenty of power and the necessary downward gearchanges for the few overtaking manoeuvres that required it.. and, shock horror, it even had a proper handbrake lever!
Start-stop was a real pain though. Coming to rest at traffic lights, it would usually cut out then immediately re-start. Also it would sometimes then cut out a second time, and at roundabouts it would sometimes kill the engine just when you wanted to pull away and take what seemed like an agonising half-second to re-start the engine. It was so quiet at idle that it was often impossible to tell, without looking down, if the engine was running. Get rid of that annoyance and it would be a serious contender for my next car in estate form.... also the gear lever would almost always require the brake pedal to be pressed when moving from "N" to "D", highly annoying as I usually slip it into N when stationary, so in traffic queues that slowly edged forward I'd sometimes be in N, then the traffic would speed up and I had to stamp on the pedal and bring the car to a total halt before moving it into D again.
DSG over-ride was push towards the front of the car to change up and pull back for down. There were at least 2 modes, normal and sport which definitely made the car hold on to lower gears for longer. The central display between speedo and tacho could cycle through several options including digital speedo and oil temperature, but strangely not the radio information.
At the end of each journey when switching off, a useful (?) message could be displayed here or on the large touch-screen infotainment system screen, sometimes it was the journey summary info (miles covered, time driven etc) or it could be a reminder to remove the ignition key or to take your mobile phone with you.
The boot is/was huge - reminded me of my old Rover 820. There is a useful divider on the left which meant I could keep my bag with sandwich and bottle of drink safe without fear of damage from my cabin-sized hand luggage.... it's very amusing to arrive back home and look at Google Timeline to find that it readily identifies with all the Tesco superstores I called at for "pitstops"!
I arrived in Aberdeen about 10:30pm on Friday night so it was getting on for 11pm when I got to the rental desk for what should have been a "Hundy" i30.
When I was asked if I was OK with an automatic, I sensed that maybe a free upgrade was on the way, most likely due to a shortage of cars as they were very busy (despite pre-booking.... I never understand why this happens and it's not the first time I have had issues with a pre-booked car not being there).
Anyway - a Skoda key was produced for me so I made my way into the car park looking for my marked bay - a nice gleaming blue Octavia. Looking at Skoda UK's website this appears to be "SE Drive" spec.
God job I know my way around the norther parts of Aberdeen as it had no sat-nav and mine had died of a flat battery on the plane journey (it must have turned itself on) and I did not have its cable to hand and didn't want to delay my short trip to the hotel any further by getting my phone out and programming the destination into it.
It felt quite a big car - wide as well as long and the interior was a nice-enough place to be, although the aluminium trims on the door cards look out of place; black would have been better but just leaving it as patterned plastic like the rest of the trim may have been better still.
Not too much steering feedback but it was light and direct. Ride quality was generally very good although some rough surfaces did cause undue bumpiness in the cabin, and some road surfaces also caused a very high level of tyre noise.
The 7-speed DSG gearbox was good too, providing engine braking on gentle downhill slopes and only requiring manual over-ride to slow on steep slopes. There was plenty of power and the necessary downward gearchanges for the few overtaking manoeuvres that required it.. and, shock horror, it even had a proper handbrake lever!
Start-stop was a real pain though. Coming to rest at traffic lights, it would usually cut out then immediately re-start. Also it would sometimes then cut out a second time, and at roundabouts it would sometimes kill the engine just when you wanted to pull away and take what seemed like an agonising half-second to re-start the engine. It was so quiet at idle that it was often impossible to tell, without looking down, if the engine was running. Get rid of that annoyance and it would be a serious contender for my next car in estate form.... also the gear lever would almost always require the brake pedal to be pressed when moving from "N" to "D", highly annoying as I usually slip it into N when stationary, so in traffic queues that slowly edged forward I'd sometimes be in N, then the traffic would speed up and I had to stamp on the pedal and bring the car to a total halt before moving it into D again.
DSG over-ride was push towards the front of the car to change up and pull back for down. There were at least 2 modes, normal and sport which definitely made the car hold on to lower gears for longer. The central display between speedo and tacho could cycle through several options including digital speedo and oil temperature, but strangely not the radio information.
At the end of each journey when switching off, a useful (?) message could be displayed here or on the large touch-screen infotainment system screen, sometimes it was the journey summary info (miles covered, time driven etc) or it could be a reminder to remove the ignition key or to take your mobile phone with you.
The boot is/was huge - reminded me of my old Rover 820. There is a useful divider on the left which meant I could keep my bag with sandwich and bottle of drink safe without fear of damage from my cabin-sized hand luggage.... it's very amusing to arrive back home and look at Google Timeline to find that it readily identifies with all the Tesco superstores I called at for "pitstops"!
