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.
It's roomy and airy, which straight away makes you feel relaxed. You sit high - the 'H-point', or hip position, is 30mm higher than in the old Fabia, to allow for the same increase in bonnet and scuttle height - but there's still plenty of headroom so Skoda's past customer base will be able to retain its hats. All Fabias have a steering wheel adjustable for both rake and reach, while the top two models (Sport and Elegance) have height adjustment for the driver's seat too. The instruments are clear, with easily read white markings (senior drivers find them easier to read than red ones, and like it or not there'll still be some senior Skoda buyers).
The best Fabias to drive are the three-cylinder ones. Leaving aside the engines themselves, covered in the next section, the reduced weight over the front wheels allows gentler suspension settings which give a splendidly supple ride. Skoda is good at making cars which work well on Britain's increasingly appalling road surfaces, because some Czech roads are similar. The result is calm, fluid progress of a kind once a French speciality, which is matched, in past-Peugeot fashion, to steering which is crisp, accurate and properly proportional even if its low gearing demands bigger arm movements than we're used to nowadays. There's a decent feel of the road, too, because the power assistance is hydraulic and so lacks the stiff, treacly feel too often found in purely electric systems. The Fabia does have an electric pump for the hydraulics, though, to save fuel.
There's plenty of grip and the front wheels don't drift wide. Easing the accelerator in a corner causes the line to tighten very slightly, in an easy, languid way designed to keep drivers relaxed. The 1.6-litre version, currently the fastest new Fabia, is a touch more interactive but its heavier engine, and the test car's heftier wheels, together spoilt the ride comfort. It was harsher, more fidgety and transmitted more road noise than the civilised 1.2-litre 12-valve sampled first. Brakes are firm, progressive and sensibly weighted across the board.
It's not what the Fabia does but the way that it does it. No Fabia variant is exactly quick, even though at between 1040 and 1170kg it's a little lighter than its most recent, and most obese, rivals. The 1.6 is quickest, with a 118mph maximum (same as the 1.9 TDI) and a 10.1-second 0-62mph time, and the optional automatic transmission shifts smoothly and responsively. Its Tiptronic-style manual shift is similarly responsive, but our test car wasn't fitted with paddleshifters so we can't report on those.
That 1.6 engine isn't very sweet, though, with some induction harshness overlaying its otherwise anodyne note under acceleration. Driving the three-cylinder Fabias is much more engaging, thanks to their characterfully deep engine notes and their surprising torque. The 1.4 pump-jet diesel, sampled by us in 80bhp guise, is a muscular little motor able happily to shrug off a load of four people plus luggage. It feels much livelier than its 13.2-second 0-62mph time suggests.
But sweetest of all the engines we tried is the 1.2-litre, 12-valve petrol three-pot, which only just breaks the 100mph mark and takes a tepid 14.9 seconds to reach 62mph. Yet it's a very willing little engine, happy to be worked hard yet pulling with easy energy from not much over 1000rpm. It's all about throttle response and a torquey feel - compared with a (four-cylinder) Vauxhall Corsa 1.2, the Skoda feels massively keener. This, for us, is the petrol Fabia of choice. The clutch and gearshift are light, precise and smooth, too.
