Advice buying Octavia

That seems like a lot of money for an Octavia to me.

Have you looked at the prices of the previous shape Passat recently? - they've dropped like a stone in the last 6 months and can be picked up for peanuts.

I've recently bought an octavia from 2000, TDI GLX. VERY GOOD CAR. Has 120k (km) on the clock. Timing belt was done at 80k (km), don't know the cost. sorry. Bought it for

I would certenly not go for an A4, if you want to keep your limit. Skoda still looses value very fast because of it's past, Audi keeps his value but isn't that much better in my opinion.

"schander" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... Hi all,

I was wondering if I could get some advice on an Octavia that I'm being offered. Its a Y plate 1.9 TDI Elegance with 76K on the clock, one owner. I'm pretty sure that it will have full Skoda service history and I know that alot of the miles are motorway miles, most of which will be done @

The guy wants £4200 for it. Is there anything that I should be looking for what is likely to go wrong considering it's been serviced regulary. Will need a timing belt change at 80K?? how much will this cost?? What are the part costs like??

I have read the thread from September, didn't make good reading on what can go wrong with these cars.

Would I better off buying a older A4/C class??? 4k is really my limit.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks satpal

We've had an Ambiente TDi for 4 years and they are fairly indestructible. Timing belt should have been done already (60,000 miles) - if not, get the cost knocked off as it will need to be done immediately, and certainly before an MoT tester revs it to the maximum. It will probably have had at least three services by now, but all diesel Octavias are on variable service intervals unless the owner has specified that it be reset to fixed intervals, so it may have only had two services given lots of motorway driving. Octavias are *very* hard on front discs (they only last for one set of pads!). They all burn a bit of oil, about a litre every 20,000 miles, so check the level. The original four tyres on ours lasted about 30,000, so a third set may be due on this car.

If on variable service intervals it must have had the correct oil - look for Castrol SLX Longlife II on any receipts. Castrol have just changed the name but it's the same stuff.

An air conditioning service every 2 years (£100 at a main dealer, £60ish at a specialist) is a real bonus. Hardly anyone bothers but the performance of the system noticeably drops after that time.

Audi has a better image, better cabin quality, considerably less reliable according to the surveys.

I asked the guy for more detail last night. He's had it serviced from Skoda @ 10K intervals and last couple have been done buy a Skoda specialist. He said that he got 70 mpg(doing 55-60mph on motorway run) at best and 45 worest. I didn;t see any receipts, but since it's been done by Skoda and then a specialist I would imagine that it's all been done correctly. The timing belt was changed at 60K. As for the rest of the car it's mint apart from a couple of minor scratches.

Thank for all you advice. I think that I'm going to buy it.

Satpal