Skoda Fabia Wagon 2015 Review

If Skoda is known in Australia at all, it’s for delivering Volkswagen-style engineering at slightly below Volkswagen-style pricing.

What it’s got a reputation for in Europe is delivering bucketloads of unashamed practicality, with clever thinking and packaging every time instead of expensive fixes.

One day soon, with the small Fabia Wagon almost on the boat, hotter Monte Carlo versions coming later this year to replace the old Fabia RS and the significantly larger new Superb flagship looming on the Australian horizon next year, those two perceptions may meet in the middle here.

And, if you’ve never taken a look at the Skoda story and what the Czech car-maker is all about, the Fabia wagon is a pretty good to begin reading. It will arrive here alongside the new Fabia hatch in July, complete with either a 66kW version of the 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol motor or an 81kW version.

The old Fabia sold with a 77kW engine, but now that lone-wolf powertrain has been straddled, with the 66kW version below the old positioning and mating up to a five-speed manual, while the 81kW unit only arrives with a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

We drove both of them, in wagon form, over Italy’s broken road system and came away impressed.

The little engine is a sweetie, in either form. It spins freely and cheerfully, it works with surprising strength from very low rpm yet it is still delivering at its redline. As a bonus, it seemed to use very little fuel.

This is a familiar unit, which also sees service in the Volkswagen Polo, with equal aplomb.

It’s quiet when you start it, never becomes intrusive at any part of its rev range and it responds smoothly and happily to any prod of the throttle, almost as though it was delighted and flattered that you asked for its help.

The stronger of the two engines feels, well, the stronger of the two engines, but the gap between them in the real world doesn’t much feel like the 22 per cent.

Part of that is because the stronger engine carries more weight, with 1178kg against the 66kW car’s 1133kg, but the sprint to 100km/h will still take 9.4 seconds in the 81kW car.

They both have the same attitude and happy nature, they both have the same strengths and few weaknesses and they are both willing, even if you ask for their best from very low engine speeds. With so little mass to move, 160Nm and 175Nm go a long way.

None of this should be a surprise. Trying to be helpful and useful seems like a Skoda thing.

The differences in transmissions contribute more to their natures than the power numbers, with the DSG just making life, well, easier in the more expensive unit.

They both publish the similar official NEDC figures of 4.7L/100km, giving the tiddler 107g/km for CO2 and the 81kW version 109g/km.

Neither engine has a place where they feel inadequate. Neither engine has a place where it particularly shines. Both feel honest and happy and entirely adequate, though the stronger engine has a bit more zing. Even if it never feels like a fifth more zing.

The DSG unit is smooth when it’s doing the stuff it does best, but it has its infuriating moments, too, such as being a bit tardy on the upshifts when you manually ask it to change gear, being sluggish immediately off the line and taking more time than a conventional auto to act on the three-point turn changes from Drive to Reverse to Drive again.

The manual is still a nice thing, though, and it’s manual gearboxes that dominate the sales figures of the mini-cars like the Fabia in Europe. So you could safely guess it will be manual sales (and therefore, the 66kW motor) that dominate Fabia Wagon sales here.

However, you can’t quite paint the Fabia wagon with a brush that broad because there simply isn’t another car like it on sale in Australia.

For starters, it has 530 litres of luggage space. Seriously. That’s an absurd figure from a car this small, a full 60 per cent more than the hatch version.

That’s more luggage capacity than you get in a five-door Golf hatch – and by some margin. Not only is the luggage area big, it’s also square and stupendously useful in its shape. And it has a full-sized spare tyre beneath its flat boot floor, and Skoda expects to bring that to Australia, too.

And if you fold the rear seats down, you get a whole lot more. It booms out to 1395 litres. The back seats don’t quite fold flat, but there’s a cheap false-floor option that no only makes a flat join to the folded rear seats, but also delivers a floor that’s level with the loading lip and creates a hidden compartment beneath it.

While a big box has been tacked onto the back of the Fabia hatch, Skoda has left the wagon with the same wheelbase, so there’s no more legroom in the back seat. That means reasonable room for three younglings, getting-a-bit-pinched for adolescents and short-runs-only for adults. The headroom is enough, though the shoulders get a bit pinched.

There’s plenty of room up front, though, even for the taller and wider participants in the species. The seats are easy to get comfortable in, with a broad range of adjustment options and the dashboard might not smack of luxury, but it’s easy to use. There isn’t much by way of soft-touch plastic to be found, but it all feels hard wearing, which is what you’re going to need when the kids start redecorating it.

There’s a 5.0-inch multimedia screen (6.5-inch on the top-spec car) and it has both scrolling and touch-screen functions. And then there are the shortcut buttons you can program yourself so you don’t have to fiddle and twirl on the go.

It’s clever and the graphics are a lot better than we expected, but there’s a problem. Well, a potential problem. The little Skoda is going to score a big win by becoming the first car in the Volkswagen Group (and that includes Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley and Porsche) to use MirrorLink technology.

This is a tech which lets you plug in your smartphone or tablet and then see everything from it on the multimedia screen, then operate it from the screen instead of the phone. Now, this is good, right?

The cars we tested used an HTC phone and the two technologies didn’t exactly get along like old buddies. Frustration piled on frustration and the navigating got difficult as the phones, on constant charge via the USB connection, overheated and simply stopped playing. Not all of the menus were as fast as we’d hoped, either, but we’ve played with this system on European Polos with iPhones and they behaved much better.

Maybe that’s why Skoda isn’t crowing about the winning the internal race to have MirrorLink on sale first. Maybe it’s just an issue with this particular set of phones. Wait until July and have a go with your own phone and see how it goes.

There are no such issues with the way the Fabia drives. You always know there’s more weight down the back than in the hatch, but it’s never an issue.

It’s an easy car to get to grips with and it does its best to wrangle its way into your affections, as though your opinion actually matters to it.

The steering is light, accurate and never feels like it will bite. It never feels like it will tell you an awful lot about the nuances of the road, either, but it never feels like it will bite.

The ride around town is firm but acceptable and it gets better with a bit more weight you put in it. And with a bit more speed. The Fabia rides better when it’s going faster, but that brings about a significant slice of wind noise from the front pillars and mirrors, and it’s noise you notice more because the engines are, at cruising speeds, surprisingly hushed.

Its body control is well judged, too, because there’s little body roll, even when provoked. Its controls are all simple to operate, simpler to live with.

There is more than enough grip for its audience in normal life and it’s the sort of car that you look at, drive, then can immediately see who it’s aimed at and why. And this car is aimed at practical people with young families and stuff to move, and who don’t want to pay a whole lot to carry it all.

Skoda doesn’t know exactly where it will price the Fabia Wagon in Australia yet, but even if the base version is a touch above the $16,990 starting price of the old model (just $1000 more than old base hatch), it’s still going to be a stupendously good-value car that does an awful lot of things very, very well.