Yet another "What Car" thread

[powerandtorque]

Ok thanks. I did drive one of the new diesel skoda octavias and frankly I thought it was pretty bloody brilliant.
The older ones do look like a decent car for the money and I've heard that they are pretty bullet proof.

The only thing that I would say for a Mk1 Octavia in my experience is to try and get a long test drive if you can - clearly everyone is a slightly different shape and thus it might not apply to you, but I found the seats in my fathers X-reg (IIRC) Octavia to be near enough crippling after about 30 minutes in a way that I've never found with any other seats. Same issue with one he had as a courtesy car that was a similar age, so I don't think it was something wrong with his particular car.

Never worked out why that particular seat design disagreed with me so much, but it did, and I'm someone that can normally sit in a car quite comfortably for hour after hour and step out at the other end feeling fresh as a daisy. Curiously, I've never had issues in any other VAG cars of that era, just Octavia's.