Category: Superminis 
Price Range: £8,950 to £13,730
Roomy, quality product, looks good with square-cut styling and a solid stance, good fun to drive especially with the smaller engines.
Ride is too firm with larger wheel option, steering is low-geared.
An engaging and practical new supermini with character.
Skoda's reinvention continues apace. On the heels of the wacky Roomster comes this, the second-generation Fabia with a calmer version of the same upright, square-cut styling. In fact the Roomster and the Fabia are exactly the same as far back as the windscreen pillars.
The previous Fabia, launched in 1999, was then one of the biggest and roomiest superminis. Since then rivals have grown to match it, but Skoda has resisted the temptation to make the new Fabia significantly larger again, given that it's still meant to be a supermini. It has, however, grown 47mm taller to give an airier interior, while the boot is bigger and the nose has expanded forwards and upwards to meet new pedestrian safety rules. The platform itself is a development of the previous Fabia's (and thus that also of the Volkswagen Polo and the Seat Ibiza).
As before, the Fabia is touted as a high-quality, unpretentious, functional car for rationally minded people; it's the sort of market positioning once occupied by Volkswagen. The engine range reflects this functionality so well that it becomes a strong character trait in its own right. It starts with a three-cylinder, 1.2-litre unit able to produce 60bhp when breathing via six valves, 69bhp via 12 valves. There's a three-cylinder turbodiesel, too, whose 1.4 litres produce either 69 or 80bhp according to tune, the latter version also reaching an impressive 144lb-ft of torque.
These engines, plus a 1.9-litre, 105bhp turbodiesel and a 1.4-litre, 86bhp petrol engine, are broadly as seen in the old Fabia range. But a former gap is now filled with a 1.6-litre, 105bhp unit already used in other VW Group cars. It's available with a new six-speed, Aisin-sourced automatic gearbox with optional paddleshifters. There's no word yet on a vRS version, be it diesel (as before) or petrol, other than that there will be one soon.
The Fabia will continue to be made for Western European markets in the Czech Republic, where it was designed and engineered, although Skoda now has, or will shortly have, assembly plants in Russia, Bosnia, China, Ukraine and even Kazakhstan.
