Time to replace the car, with an Octavia vRS?

mccarf said:
I used to own one and it was a nice car (well built interior etc) but extremely unreliable. At 80k it needed an engine rebuild which is when I dumped it in part exchange. The others on the forums shared a lot of my issues including excessive oil usage. That one also seems rather overpriced to me. Ford did make a mondeo with the 2.5t from the focus St. Not sure if that fares any better in reliability but I doubt it could be worse than that octavia
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Interesting, is that with the BWA engine? I'd be looking for a 2009+ with a CCZA. I've heard about oil consumption on the TFSI, but not to the point where it was an issue.

Diagro said:
Mazda 3 2.2D
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Diesels don't do it for me. Not for me.

Liquid_Entity said:
I have an 08 2.5T mondeo. Apart from a seriously shoddy job from a garage to replace the aux belts which then caused a catastrophic engine failure (aux belt snapped and went through the cam belt destroying it) its been rebuilt and fine ever since. Done over 20k in it now. Few months ago had a £500 bill for suspension issues but half that was the required tool to do it and labour. That's the only real work needed.

Boot is enormous and its quick enough for my needs even with the family in it. 2yrs left on the loan and then I'll probably get rid of it towards something else.
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Had Mondeo in the back of mind - but always think of them as huge cars. I'll look at them vs the vRS size wise, not sure my wife would be happy driving it.
 
Kenai said:
Really struggle to fault my vRS. Had to replace the PCV which causes the erratic idle as mentioned above but this is cheap and easy to do. Uses a bit of oil but not so much i'm topping it up weekly or anything daft. Mine is pushing 115k now and the engine doesn't feel tired at all. It's deceptively large inside too.

All i'd say is I paid under £3k for mine on 80k, £5k seems slightly steep even though it's a year newer.

These engines are what power the Golf GTI, Leon FR/Cupra, A3 and a few others of the era - they can be niggly but the idea that they're likely to need an engine rebuild is a bit OTT.
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First thing that jumped in to my mind was thats a bit pricey.

Those that have referenced unreliability I think the early batches of the revised chain driven engines seemed to have a high failure rate (07/08 cars iirc?). Mines a 07 TFSI with a belt and it has been fine other than a few minor issues, but it has been well seviced.

I too changed the PCV which was oddly throwing up a 'engine running lean' fault code. The other common issue is the carbon filter which throws up a purge valve fault.

Mines at 137k now and still going strong.
 
Diagro said:
Mazda 3 2.2D

Can be had for your budget.

They do a 185bhp version.

Boots fine.
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Didn’t you have nothing but trouble with yours :confused: seem to remember you posting quite a bit about it and getting some stick before you seen sense and chopped it in for the MPS :D
 
Dav4 said:
Didn’t you have nothing but trouble with yours :confused: seem to remember you posting quite a bit about it and getting some stick before you seen sense and chopped it in for the MPS :D
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Well... Not really. Only issues I had were caused by myself and my need to mess with things
 
GeX said:
Interesting, is that with the BWA engine? I'd be looking for a 2009+ with a CCZA. I've heard about oil consumption on the TFSI, but not to the point where it was an issue.
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That was with the pre face-lift 2007 car. There was a lot of threads about it on briskoda at the time. Mine used to go from max to min in one tank of fuel so every time I filled with petrol I filled it with oil the same time. From everything I read from owners who still had their cars from new it seemed very much down to how they ran in their cars. The ones who were gentle seemed to suffer oil problems and the ones who drove it harder didn't. If you're thinking of the one with the chain engine then they didn't have as much of a reputation for oil use iirc but did come with their own set of problems which I've forgotten now. I think they're really a luck of the draw car because you can have one that's completely fine or a total nightmare. Of course every car is the same but I do think these petrol vrs suffered considerably more failures than an average car. Just as an example I took mine to a specialist to get it diagnosed and he pointed out that there was several cars from audi/vw/seat around the place with a similar engine to mine and told me he gets them in all the time.

The octavia is 4572mm and the mondeo is 4731mm according to auto trader. Not a lot in it really!
 
GeX said:
Interesting, is that with the BWA engine? I'd be looking for a 2009+ with a CCZA. I've heard about oil consumption on the TFSI, but not to the point where it was an issue.


Diesels don't do it for me. Not for me.



Had Mondeo in the back of mind - but always think of them as huge cars. I'll look at them vs the vRS size wise, not sure my wife would be happy driving it.
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If you get a Titanium X model then you get parking sensors, probably lower models do too. Excuse the grandad colour but I like the fact everyone thinks it's a standard car then I floor it. Still not the fastest compared to modern cars but goes when you need it.
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Ive recently picked up a 2014 Octavia VRS Estate, which will be replacing my 2008 Mondeo Titanium-X 2.5T Estate which is currently in the bodyshop getting it ready to sell.

The Octavia is night and day a far better car than the Mondeo. Is faster, cheaper to tax (£155 vs £305) and returns far better fuel economy on the 20 mile each way journey to work (35-40mpg vs 25-30mpg).

Sure the Octavia doesn't have all the bells and whistles that the Mondeo has, but the VAG group charge for every possible optional extra. But I did manage to find my VRS with 42k miles, panoramic sunroof, full leather seats, Columbus head unit, heated front and rear screens and heated front seats.
 
I'm after a similar car to you. My short list is as follows;

Skoda Octavia VRS
Ford Mondeo 2.5t
Subaru Legacy 3.0R spec B (estate)
Volvo V50 T5
Saab 9-3 v6 turbo (estate)

I keep changing my mind all the time... I think all of the above have their good / bad points, so I'll probably just get whatever comes up first.

Also, keep your hands of any legacys that come up, I think they are winning atm, and its hard to find a nice one.
 
MSTRBKR said:
The fuel economy on these is like 22mpg isn't it? Even if you don't mind paying that much, the range will be short between fills.
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They'll do over 30 on a run. The Mondeo has a 70 litre tank so you can get near 500 miles of longer distance driving between fills.
 
MSTRBKR said:
The fuel economy on these is like 22mpg isn't it? Even if you don't mind paying that much, the range will be short between fills.
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Town driving about 24mpg, mixed 27/28, motorway commute most days about 30mpg. Life’s too short to worry about mpg if you want something with some power. Very easy to get a good remap on that engine aswell for around £400 which will increase mpg a little and add 40bhp.
 
dhill said:
The Octavia is night and day a far better car than the Mondeo.
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Behave! Your comparing a new gen Octavia that’s 6 years newer than your older gen Mondeo that was launched 11yrs ago.
If you put a 2008 Titanium X or X Sport next to a 2008 VRS the Mondeo craps all over it in every department apart from being about 0.5 seconds slower to 60.
 
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