My first car, a Dacia Logan I bought since the release of the model (actually I placed the order 2 months BEFORE the car was released) has just made 6 years. Six great years when it didn’t fail me once. Oh wait, it did once, kind of. But that got fixed rather quickly. Yet it’s true that I cared about it – not in the obsessive passionate way I heard (or even seen) some people do (cleaning it weekly or even more often, inside and outside, caring about every single scratch, let alone pimp it up or “tune” it…) But given that this car has been designed for a lifespan of 5 to 7 years, I thought it is better if I either sell it or retire it as a backup vehicle. It does not even have a great mileage – only 88.000 km in 6 years. Not a large number, but for the first 2 years it more stayed than traveled. Yet, if I keep on using it, I expect the maintenance costs to slightly increase. So… to keep it or to replace it? That is the question.
Don’t worry, this is not a sales post. 🙂 Still, this was a debated subject at home a few days ago. And we decided to replace it – the only question left was “with what”?
Considered criteria were: not very high fuel consumption, automatic gearbox, and comfortable. This is what we aimed for. Of course, there were other things to account for: price, service and, last but not least, credit. After lots of considerations, the race was pretty tight between two finalists: Chevrolet Cruze and Skoda Octavia. Now, let’s make it clear: you will see ads with “prices starting at X EUR”. Don’t be fooled: these are the prices for the base model, basic engine, least features and so on. If you go for one of the top models, you can safely double the price, if not rise it up to 2,5 times the advertised “starting” one. And if you add some extra features (like leather package – easy to clean but not the wisest choice if you have pets or kids – xenon lights and so on) the price can almost triple. And that’s nice for you, but pretty bad for the budget. Anyway, the decision was hard to make until Saturday morning (October 2nd) when we went for a test drive with the 1,4 l TSI Octavia. I drove a DSG-equipped Octavia almost a year ago, but that was on a 105 HP 1,9 liter TDI engine. This one was equipped with a manual gearbox (6 stages), but the extra 17 HP made quite a difference. And the fact that on a petrol engine you get 200 Nm of torque all the way from 1500 up to 4000 rpm. I will only say that at 4000 rpm the engine seemed to me a bit less noisy than in my Logan, and in the 2nd gear at that RPM I was traveling at almost 70 km/h!!! In the 4th gear I was doing 60 km/h at around 2000 rpm. The feeling was very nice, it helped me make my mind. The final straw was the credit offer, which gave smoke to all competition by allowing the longest period (10 years, although I don’t intend to keep the credit running for all that time), hence the lowest rate, and the lowest fixed interest rate, 9% for the entire duration of the credit. For a credit in RON, not in EUR.
Therefore we placed the order for a Skoda Octavia Business, 1,4 TSI DSG7. We added some extra stuff, like cruise control, extended guarantee, rear window wiper, headlights washing system and automatic dimming rear mirrors (internal and driver side). I understand that at first the car was scheduled for delivery in week 51 and a couple of days later the due date was changed to week 50. Until then, all that’s left for me to do is develop my patience skills, which I am a far cry from even a reasonable level… 😀
Update 20101209: today around 17:30 I’m going to get her from the dealer. Gonna return with pics… 🙂
Update 2 20101210: Didn’t download the pics from the camera, but it FINALLY came and we were put in possession!