2005 Skoda Fabia Elegance 1.9 turbo diesel from UK and Ireland
Summary:
The car is a funny combination of reliable but constantly broken
Faults:
I have had 34 electrical problems to date. My first problem was blowing bulbs, mainly L/H headlight. This turned out to be vibration at idle. I remounted the headlight on rubber shims, which has cured the problem.
Next was power steering failure, which turned out to be the load sense line to the alternator (broken wire).
Then the driver's door switch.
Rear wiper motor.
L/H rear door central locking failure.
Both rear doors leaking.
Rear hatch lock failure.
Passenger heated seat failure.
Driver's electric wing mirror.
Heater blower.
Air con won't hold gas.
Both front ABS wheel sensors at different times.
I have had problems with the driver's and passenger's windows moving on their own or just not moving at all.
Fuel temp sensor.
Coolant temp sensor.
General Comments:
I took it to Skoda for the first couple of problems, and found they just wanted to play parts darts with it. I started fixing the problems myself. I will say that it is always catching several faults, but it has never broken down and only once failed to start, which was partly my fault, as I left the lights on, but this was due to no lights on warning when I open the driver's door, as the door switch was not working.
The quality of the wiring is truly awful. There are bare wires everywhere, and where tape has been applied, it looks like the person who applied it was wearing boxing gloves.
Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? No
Review Date: 17th January, 2015
30th Jul 2022, 15:13
Skoda and a lot of the Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG) cars are a little overrated in my opinion. I've had many of them over the years. Generally reliable yes, especially mechanically can do high mileage, but the rest of the faults and wear and tear is just the same as any other averagely performing car.
19th Jan 2015, 16:34
I noticed that my list of faults is incomplete, but you should get the picture. I now have a car that is effectively worthless, as there are engine management problems that no one is prepared to give me a fix price for.
So, an otherwise mechanically perfect car will have to be sold as a non runner, even though it drives perfectly.
This is what happens when someone designed a condition monitoring system that is of inferior quality to the system it is monitoring.