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.
Comfort is a key Fabia ingredient, as demonstrated by the previous model with its roomy cabin, quiet mechanicals and unusually good ride. The new one continues these themes (except when too-sporty wheels and a heavier engine spoil the ride), and has more space. There's an extra 12mm of front headroom and, thanks to that flat roofline, another 42mm in the back. The boot has another 40 litres of volume, its loading lip is 20mm lower and there's a flexible, semi-circular storage 'corral' clipped to the right-hand wall of the boot. The higher seating positions relative to the floor allow legs to be more folded, too, which effectively increases legroom.
There's quite a lot of storage space, with two facia gloveboxes (neither of them large), several cupholders plus a fold-down, openable armrest between the front seats on the top model. It's not clear yet which models in the UK will have manual air-con, automatic air-con or even no air-con but it's likely that all except the entry-level Classic will have some form of air-chilling, including in the glovebox. The very basic version of the Classic for some markets lacks the padded dashboard, the glovebox lids and even power steering, but UK buyers are unlikely to be so deprived.
Beyond Classic there's Ambiente, Sport and Elegance, but no Comfort this time. Equipment levels rise predictably through the hierarchy, and you can add various wheel designs and stereo/sat-nav systems to the mix. Bluetooth phone connections and iPod/MP3 interfaces are also available.
