You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
So.. had a hire car on holiday in Spain the other week given all the noise on here about Octavia's I thought that, when they offered me an estate instead of the Dacia jogger I'd booked thought it worth having.
On first impression s it seemed great for a family of 5. Loads of boot space, Plenty of rear leg room, enough width (and suitable seats shape) to fit three kids across the back. Fab..
But, driving it,it felt a bit weird. Initially the light steering was quite handy to get it out of a tight underground car park, but once on the. Main dual carriageway and motorways it was really vague and wandery, not easily holding a line and in need of constant correction.
It reminded me a bit of an old fist Punto my wife had, with a super light urban steering mode. Just that the Octavia's didn't turn off at 30mph!
Is this normal? Are they specced differently in different countries to meet differing driver expectations?
It just felt really vague and disconnected, and the lane keep assist was barely noticeable when I did wander off lane a bit...
Basically, based on this experience the Octavia is off the list of possible future cars. Is that fair? Bear in mind I currently drive a Citroen C4 grand picasso "dadbus" so not exactly a performance offering!!
Cheers
Keith
Heads up, I use it but not as much as I wish I did.
Ours is slightly lower than standard
Adaptive cruise control. Love it.
Lane assist, you can push through it but it does nudge you back in. Take a gentle corner and the lane assist takes you round it. (A bit annoying in contraflowed works)
It feels slightly twitchier than our focus estate did (I believe it's an axel/ suspension design, but I'm not fully up to speed and I'm used to it now)
It's comfy, relaxing well thought out (despite the sunglass holder latch failing) .
(despite the sunglass holder latch failing) .
Same thing in our Superb if it's the one in the front interior light cluster. Blasted thing fell open then out of the headlining into the passenger footwell in the end. One attempted fix later, which lasted about a day, it is residing permanently in the rear footwell.
OP this is going to sound odd but I thought the same about our Superb being vague and wandery (no resistance at all from straight ahead) and then I moved the seat forward and up a bit as I felt a bit stretched out.
I don't fully understand why but the sense of vagueness immediately vanished when I moved just an inch or two closer to the wheel. I can only assume it's a body geometry thing, possibly overstretched arms. The steering is still more than averagely light but not unpleasantly so (I always notice that our Focus is weightier).
Dunno about the MK4 but on my MK3 the driving mode changes the steering resistance, I have it set to sport all the time, as otherwise I find the steering too light.
I think the newer ones can be specified with adaptive steering, not sure if yours had this or not.
Edit: Also tyre pressure can make a big difference. If yours was a hire car it may have had them set incorrectly for the weight the car was carrying. Has two values for either normally loaded or heavily loaded i.e. 5 up and a boot full of heavy crap.
Basically, based on this experience the Octavia is off the list of possible future cars. Is that fair?Yes, i had one as a hire car too. Awful thing. A wallpaper car, except not even decent wallpaper, that horrible stuff that tears as soon as you look at it. And the pattern never matches.
On our third Octavia estate, so starting our third decade of Octavia ownership.
Never noticed the steering as wandery or vague. It's a solid dependable family/load lugger. Sports mode sharpens the steering when you want it.
I have a 63 VRS diesel, I wouldn't say it has light or drifty steering but it's possible newer non VRS models have wildly different specs and tech.
It's definitely not a perfect car, but chucking my full pinnacle arkose in the back after siding out to a new at friends this weekend reminds me just how useful it is!
Recent move to a 23 plate petrol VRS estate. The steering can wander at times but it might be the 19" wheels getting deflected on the camber etc a bit.
Although you can select sport for steering it just adds some weight, I think the adaptive suspension option for several £k more would have a more dramatic change to ride etc.
The standard 2l diesel I drove was nice but they are meant to be more comfort focussed compared to the Golf and Leon.
Lane assist can be switched off albeit every time you start the car. Front assist can be a bit sensitive but that can be disabled also I believe.
Lane assist can be set to "remember last setting" with various tools. I use ODBeleven and it is great for this. We're a couple of miles from the first road with a centre line on it and it got tedious being warned to drive in your lane when you're on a single lane with passing places.
It also lets you stop the doors locking automatically when you move which is the most annoying feature I've ever had on a car!
We have a Mk4 Octavia estate. The lane assist thing is awful, I now instinctively turn it off as soon as I get in. It's a couple of button presses but it annoys me that you can't set it to default to "off". Switched off, I don't notice any steering vagueness and it's pleasant enough to drive. The 1.5 petrol engine is frugal and has enough go for a family estate. I won't be buying another though as the car has major issues with the electrics and "infotainment" system in particular, which Skoda have been unable to fix. The car is a 21 plate, I bought it at 18 months old. It is still covered by Skoda's extended warranty. Issues:
- Music switches itself on and off randomly. Sometimes coming on when the car is locked and parked. At maximum volume at 3 or 4 in the morning!
- Whilst driving, music volume increases until it is at maximum, despite no input from me. If you turn it down or mute it, it gradually ramps up to maximum, deafening volume. This is distracting and dangerous. When it happens, there's no way of stopping it. This is intermittent and will happen every day for 3 or 4 days, stops for a month or so, then happens again.
- Infotainment screen sometimes starts rebooting every 10 seconds or so, throughout a whole journey. This means heating, music, navigation controls etc. are all unavailable as everything is controlled by the screen.
- Infotainment screen sometimes just stops working completely, for the whole journey or several consecutive journeys. All the above functions become unavailable. A real shit if it's a hot day and you can't use the aircon.
- "SOS" function disables itself every 4 or 5 times you drive it.
- Car sometimes locks itself without asking. Sometimes with the keys inside. Fortunately we've always had the spare keys available when this has happened.
- Key batteries need changing every 4 months or so.
- Rear courtesy light comes on and off randomly. When it comes on, you can't switch it off.
The car has been in to the dealers 4 or 5 times to try to rectify these issues with no joy. Because they are intermittent. they invariably don't present when it's booked in at the dealer. They run diagnostics, say there are no fault codes, do a software update and tell me it's fine. A few days later one or all of the above will happen again. Massively frustrating. I know it's not just me, if you go on the Briskoda forum, loads of people experience the same. It's a real shame, as electronics aside the car is great. Comfort, load carrying, driving etc. But I wouldn't touch Skoda with a barge pole in future after this experience.
I had a recent-ish 2.0TDi Octavia for a few years. It had eco/normal/sport driving modes. Eco was truly dreadful, it was like driving porridge. I stuck it in Sport and left it there.
I bought a MK3 facelift to avoid the reported electrical gremlins in the MK4 and judging by that previous post it was a smooth move.
Zero issues with our petrol VRS and the annoying lane assist does stay in whichever setting you left it in i.e. permanently off for us. It's never been back to the dealer yet.
I bought ours because it ticked the most boxes not because I'm a Skoda fanatic. Having said that I can't criticise it. It does absolutely nothing wrong and I wouldn't change a thing. It's the best car we've had since junior came along and we had to start carting around piles of baby-junk everywhere we go.
A trashed hire car that gets used and abused every day by uncaring punters probably isn't the best model for a road test.
Recently bought a Skoda and good to know that I'm not the only one who isn't impressed with the lane assist function. Makes me feel nauseous, like motion sickness. Will take a look at the manual and switch the wretched thing off.
The lane assist is annoying.
We had a serious look at other estates before getting this third Octavia. We didn't fancy paying extra for a Golf estate. The only thing that felt worthwhile was a Kia Ceed estate, which are surprisingly hard to find at 1-2 years old.
I've experienced most of the Infotainment issues Blokeuptheroad has mentioned and found it to be caused by the battery voltage being slightly down after being used about the town a lot and not driven whilst away for six weeks, battery is five years old which might be a factor. Problems went away after charging up the battery.
Steering wise, I came to the Octavia from a Mazda 6 which cornered like it was on rails but the Skoda is much comfier and before the Mazda I had MK2, 4 & 5 Passats and they were truly awful going round corners.
@chickenman thanks. I'll take a look at the battery, but I'm doubtful that's the issue. It's been doing it since I had the car at 18 months old, so the battery wasn't really old. I've never had any issues starting it. The car is used almost daily, often on longish journeys so it's getting plenty of chance to recharge. It's never left without being driven for any appreciable amount of time. Also, most of the faults occur whilst driving when surely power from the alternator should be ensuring everything is getting enough juice?
Starting wasn't a problem for me but I did notice the stop/start not happening driving in the town like it usually did. You should check the voltage with a meter that checks it under load.
How do you switch the lane assistance off in the MK4?
On the MK3 it's a steering wheel button under your right thumb. One click on and off.
How do you switch the lane assistance off in the MK4?
It's all on the steering wheel. I think 2 or 3 clicks - click thumb button to bring up menu, other button to clear checkbox and then optionally original button to remove the menu. You get used to doing it without looking when you have to.
I've turned it off permanently though (or made it remember the last setting over the car being restarted).
Right thumb on top left button in cluster on steering wheel, select by pressing in knurled chrome dial. I quite like leaving it on for motorway driving after a hard day on the hill.
VAG dropped a bollock on the infotainment systems across the board a few years ago it seems. It's not just a Skoda thing. Reports were so widespread I completely wrote off the idea of updating my GTI. The later VAG cars have gone back to more buttons and knobs, which has sorted a lot of things by all accounts.
Mis-post
In my list of issues above, I forgot to mention the worst and most dangerous. An overly zealous "brake assist" feature, that slams the anchors on at totally inappropriate times. An example. I was doing about 55 on a rural NSL road. Good road, well surfaced and clear sight lines. I slowed to about 40 for a sweeping 90 degree left hand bend through which I had a clear view of the road ahead for several hundred yards. A tractor was coming the other way and was at the apex of the corner at the same time as me, but obviously going in the opposite direction. The road was wide, he was well within his lane and me in mine. A good 4 or 5 feet between us as we passed each other.
The car however decided to apply the brakes hard just before we drew alongside each other. It obviously saw the tractor in front of me and thought I was going to hit it, despite there being absolutely zero chance of that. A clear failure to anticipate and allow for a pretty common driving scenario by the designers or programmers of this "safety feature". I nearly shat myself! As I was cornering at the time it really upset the handling and nearly threw me towards the tractor. Had there been another car behind me, I might have been rear ended.
I've had it happen on other occasions such as when it detects a stationary car waiting at a side junction when I'm on a main road with right of way, or when it sees a pedestrian waiting to cross at a pedestrian crossing if they're very close to the kerb. The whole electrical system is so poorly put together, it can't possibly have been adequately tested before release.
OP it sounds like your hire car had bad steering alignment and possibly over inflated tyres.
I drive boggo Octavias quite a bit at work and they generally will track dead straight and are very easy to drive. Think 'a Golf with a long wheelbase" and you basically have an Octavia.
Also the Octavia VRS that people like on this forum has different suspension setup (not just different springs, dampers etc, it's a different design), so not really comparable.
ETA, the above is about the suspension with lane keeping OFF, i agree that function is crap/dangerous