SEAT needs to find its signature dish

WHEN Withnail and I paid a visit to Penrith they demanded the finest wines known to humanity. When my companion and I ended up there, on a soaked excuse for an evening last week, we ended up staring at the menu outside a Spanish restaurant.

I mention this because – even with every other restaurant in town shut for the night – we still preferred to pop to the nearest chip shop instead because we just didn’t fancy Spanish cuisine. There’s nothing wrong with Spanish cuisine, of course – we just decided we’d rather dine on something slightly more familiar.

It’s exactly the same, I reckon with Spanish cars – by which, of course, I mean SEAT. So far this year, I’ve tried both the new Leon and the hatchback it replaced, and both ticked all the buttons in a nourishing, one-of-your-five-a-day sort of way. Both were effortless when they were on the motorway, entertaining when they weren’t and built with the sort of attention to detail that’d give a chess champion a headache.

Great cars, then, but I can’t think of a single reason why you’d buy one.

SEATs are supposed to be the sportier Spanish cousins of VWs but they aren’t – they are, especially if you look at the Mii and the Alhambra, VW models with a slight nip ‘n’ tuck and a different badge. If I want a VW with a sense of mischief, I’ll get a Golf GTI.

"But SEATs are usefully cheaper than VWs, aren’t they?" I hear you cry. Again, SEAT’s usurped on this one by Skoda, who not only make their cars cheaper than VW’s but more interesting and engaging too. The Yeti, in particular, fills a niche nobody else at Europe’s biggest car maker does by being the perfect car for anyone who owns a Labrador, while the Superb caters perfectly for anyone looking for a car with an overly confident name. They might as well have called it the Skoda Awesome or even the Skoda Screw You, It’s Better Than Your Car, Mate.

SEAT, on the other hand, produces a range of cars that are just as good as anything VW, Skoda and Audi can come up with but there’s no signature dish to woo you with its exotic aromas. There’s no impossibly powerful Leon Cupra R any more, or a small sports car to fill the gap the Fiat Barchetta and the MGF left. Reheating what was admittedly a great dish – the old Audi A4 – in the microwave is not going to get my tastebuds going.

For now, my vote’s still with fish and chips. The Ford Focus, in other words.

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Škoda's go-faster Octavia ready for August launch

PRICES for a family-friendly slingshot from Škoda will start at just under £23,000 when it goes on sale next month.

The company’s performance twist on the latest Octavia, the RS, is available with either a 220bhp petrol engine or a 184bhp turbodiesel, which is packed into either the sleek hatchback or the load-lugging estate.

Alasdair Stewart, the company’s UK brand director, said: "The new Octavia vRS has a very special place in the heart of everyone at Škoda.

"It unites our love of motorsport, sharp design and bold engineering, and is one of the most exciting cars we’ve ever made."

The cheapest version, the petrol estate, starts at £22,990, with the entire Octavia RS range going on sale on August 1.

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So you want a secondhand supermini...

AN OBSERVATION about first cars. All the sensible people I know, having chucked away their L-plates, go for something sensible that’ll start up first thing on a frosty morning. The petrolheads don’t. 

There’s a lot to be said for making for your first car an automotive adventure in itself, which is why my first car was a 1983 Mini. Despite being held together largely with gaffer tape and string I loved driving it but even I’ll concede it wasn’t exactly an everyday car, because every day was a new and exciting way for it to entertain you with a breakdown. Whisper it softly, but during my first stint as a reporter in North Wales my “everyday car” was a borrowed Vauxhall Corsa! 

So I understood completely when a friend asked for a few car buying suggestions, not on some crusty old Sixties sports car, but a sensible, cheap secondhand supermini that’d actually be capable of getting her and her clobber up to a new job in Northumberland. She also bought a Mini as her first car, and while she’d rather sell her right arm than her pride ‘n’ joy I can understand why she’d want a more sensible automotive sidekick for the long trips to the North East. 

There’s plenty on offer - even in these days of spiralling insurance, it’s still possible to buy, insure and tax a decent set of wheels for less than a grand – but if it were my money I’d be looking at Peugeot’s 306, VW’s Lupo, Skoda’s Fabia and the earlier, funkier versions of Toyota’s Yaris. They’re all usefully younger than my trusty old Rover, should eake out a few more miles to the gallon and – by virtue of being younger – have plenty of life left in them. The Peugeot, in particular, would offer you more smiles per gallon too because it’s always been a fine handler – perfect if your other car’s an old Mini and you’ve got some Northumbrian country roads to play with. 

But, when it came down to sealing the deal, it wasn’t a 306 she went for, or a Yaris, Fabia or Lupo for that matter. In fact, she’d gone for the supermini you can pick up for buttons these days because everybody owned one and as a result there’s still millions to choose from. The supermini I’ve driven on countless occasions and always secretly enjoyed because it rides and handles so well. The supermini, in fact, that I passed my driving test in and which – had I not decided to go for that infernal Mini – probably would’ve been my first car. 

The supermini I’d completely forgotten about. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Ford Fiesta!

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Fire up the... Skoda Citigo

THE ONLY way is up! That's what Europe's biggest car company - the mighty VW Group - are hoping you'll conclude if you're thinking of buying a small car to squeeze into tight parking spaces.

Yet you don't actually have to stump up for a Volkswagen if you're looking to buy the up!, the German firm's smallest offering. Trek down to your nearest Skoda showroom and they'll happily sell you the same car in all but name. That's the joy of the Skoda Citigo.

Skoda, in case you hadn't noticed, stopped making Eastern Bloc oddities years ago and is now quietly taking over the world with a range of cleverly thought-out cars which are usefully cheaper than their VW cousins; the Yeti you'll already know and love, there's a new Octavia saloon on the way, and for anyone thinking of a Golf or Focus there's now the Rapid hatchback too. The Citigo's a bit more obviously related to its siblings - the aforementioned up! and the SEAT Mii - but that's by no means a bad thing.

You get, for instance, the same neatly-proportioned body, although the Skoda's styling is more conservative than the up!'s. You get the same 60bhp, 1.0 litre petrol powerplant with its offbeat engine note, the same gearbox, and the same solidly built, suprisingly roomy interior. You get an awful lot for your money but - and here's the important bit - you get it for quite a bit less than you would if you'd gone for the cachet of the VW badge instead. Depending on which version you go for, you can save roughly between £500 and a grand by opting for the Czech-badged car.

The trickier question, as I mentioned when I drove the up! earlier this year, is whether to go for it over a Fiat Panda, which lacks the Skoda's solidity and style but is roomier and more fun to drive. That's a tough one to call, but if you're dead set on the up! and its siblings you'll be quids in by swapping the Veedub badge for a Skoda one.

Clever marketing or VW shooting itself in the foot? You decide...

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The Skoda Octavia is a Czech motoring icon

IT HIT me as I pulled a fistful of Koruna out of my pocket to pay for the enormous glass of Pilsner. Prague, thanks to public transport that’s second to none, doesn’t really need the car.

During my three days in the Czech capital last week it struck me that the central European city’s a cracking holiday destination largely because it’s very pretty, almost everyone speaks English and the beer’s very cheap. However, the added bonus is that everything is linked up to everything else using a mind bogglingly comprehensive spaghetti of trams, buses, boats and underground trains.

Praguers, then, don’t really need to drive, but when they do they almost always go for the same car. The Skoda Octavia.

You might think Skoda’s mid-range offering is fairly unremarkable but on the bustling streets of Prague they’re everywhere – the taxi drivers swear by them, every police patrol vehicle is an Octavia vRS and every other parking space for miles around is filled with the Czech company’s finest. True, Skoda offers value for money like few other car companies but you just couldn't imagine Londoners taking up say, the Rover 75, with anything like the same vigour.

There are even a couple of horrors within the pages of this uniquely Czech success story – I couldn’t help but take a picture of a navy blue model some colourblind yoof had decked out with yellow alloys, silver door handles and green bumpers!

The Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy fan in me had secretly hoped every alley in Prague would be littered with Eastern Bloc oddities from the bad old days, but all I found were Octavias. In fact, I had to venture all the way to the city’s technical museum to get a glimpse of the old school Skodas and Tatras – idiosyncratic, rear-engined offerings which you were allocated largely on your standing within the communist party. They’re fascinating footnotes from the country’s industrial past but the museum pieces are just that – exhibits, which looked all the more obsolete because they were displayed alongside decadent, capitalist classics like Jaguars and BMWs from the same era.

In fact, it was only towards the end of my trip I tracked down a proper socialist saloon – a Trabant, which I know is of East German origin but would have been a common sight here a generation ago. Yet just as you’re more likely to see a branch of KFC than a Soviet tank in central Prague in these days, so the Trabbie, intriguing though it was, looked a bit ridiculous in a city that’s long since turned its back on the bad old days.

Naturally, it was parked next to a modern motor I’d much rather drive. A Skoda Octavia.

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Czech out these stunning classic cars from the Prague Technical Museum

TODAY'S Life On Cars treat comes all the way from Prague, which is fascinating for all sorts of reasons if you're into car culture.

There are all sorts of reasons why you'd enjoy the Czech capital if you enjoy things with wheels and engines - some of which I'll go into tomorrow - but above all I'd reccomend a trip to the city's Technical Museum, which is a bit off the beaten tourist track but is off the petrolhead scale in terms of exhibits.

Not only do you get all the automotive oddities you'd expect to find in a distinctly Czech museum, including plenty of Skodas and Tatras, but all sorts of stunning machines produced long before the Iron Curtain went up. I'm not sure how a Jaguar SS1, an unrestored Mercedes W154 Grand Prix car and a Bugatti Type 51 ended up in Prague, but I'm glad they did. However, even they couldn't play fiddle to what, for me, was their most prized possession of all - a MKIX Spitfire, which was flown by Czechoslovak fighter pilots who served with the RAF in the Second World War.

Here are just some of the cars offering a handy distraction for any car nuts who fancy giving the Charles Bridge a miss...

Read more of Life On Cars writer David Simister's motoring reflections on Prague tomorrow (June 24).

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