03 Sep 07
This belated wisdom hit me the other day when I was returning to the 1.9 TDI in my local Morrisons car park. I was heavily laden with shopping bags, so I was walking more slowly than usual and had time to take in the full defiant irregularity of the Skoda's profile. I still admire the way the windows all seem to be from different cars, but the snub-nosed silhouette has a nasty whiff of Suzuki Wagon R about it.
In isolation, the front of the Roomster, viewed from the side, is a lot like the MkII Fabia, a fantastic-looking car, with a strong resemblance to another Suzuki, the current Swift.
But the rest of the Roomster has nothing at all in common with the Fabia, or indeed with geometry, or style, or taste. That said, it's probably preferable to the rather dull looks of the recently revealed Fabia estate, a far more conventional car than the Roomster.
If I'm obsessing about the looks, that may be because I've recently read a couple of books about great-looking cars: Jaguar E-Type - Portrait of a Design Icon, by Glen Smale, and Lamborghini - Celebration of an Italian Legend, both published by Haynes. Good-looking cars don't just happen, as these books both make clear, but it's not actually any cheaper to produce an ugly or dull car than a good-looking one. Still, at least the Roomster doesn't look dull.
