Skoda Fabia 1.9 TDI estate

Road Test

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Skoda Fabia 1.9 TDI estate

Test date 09 January 2008 Price as tested £13,775

For Space for the price, refinement, standard of finish, performance

AgainstNarrow cabin, slightly gawky styling, awkward folding of rear seats

The Fabia’s origins can be traced right back to the point when Skoda entered the modern age and launched the Favorit in 1987. Not that the front-wheel-drive, five-door Favorit was a trail-blazer compared to what else was out there, but it made for a seismic break-away from the ancient technology of the rear-engined Renault 8-based Estelle that preceded it.

Skoda developed an estate version of the Favorit, as it did the Felicia hatch that followed, and the original Fabia estate that this replaces. Yet all of these, including the new Skoda Fabia estate can only be described as a rare breed.

Estate versions of superminis are not common, most manufacturers offering such boxy, five-door practicality in the class above. Without careful packaging there can be little point to supermini estates, which might offer more room than their hatch counterparts but barely enough to warrant the extra outlay, either for the customer or the manufacturer engineering the car.

But the Skoda Fabia, now in its second iteration, is an exception. This supermini is more space-efficient than average and the wagon version capitalises on that by providing a genuinely big boot with the rear seats in place, and extensive space with them folded down.

But the Fabia is not alone in this class; it squares up to Peugeot’s 207 SW estate and will soon face a wagon version of the Renault Clio. Beyond these you must look to the growing breed of mini-MPVs, which include the Vauxhall Meriva, Nissan Note, Renault Modus, the Ford Fusion and, indeed, Skoda’s very own Roomster.