Last week we got the opportunity to test drive the new Skoda Roomster. We went up to Dublin and collected a brand spanking new, lovely bright blue Roomster, we were to keep it for a week and drive it between us to see what we thought of it.
Before we give each of our (honest!!) opinions about the car, we will give you a short description of the car and its features, from the manufacturers description.
So for the technical stuff: The car that we were testing was the
Skoda Roomster Comfort 1.2 TSI 63 LW (85 bhp)
Some of the standard equipment that came with this car;
- Driver, passenger & side air bags
- Rear Parking Sensors
- Front Electric Windows
- Cruise Control
- Passenger Airbag turn off switch
- Curtain Airbags
- Remote Central Locking
- Vario Flex Seating
- Radio & Bluetooth enabled
The retail price, excluding delivery and related charges is €18,140
Now for what Yvonne’s Family had to say…..
Initially it was lovely to drive a brand new car with that lovely new smell and of course it was sooo clean – ok so that can apply to any new car!
Positives
- The boot space was brilliant, lots of room, I could fit all my shopping in and it wasn’t all squashed.
- The car had bluetooth so every time I sat into it, it picked up my phone in a few seconds, to answer or make calls you just pushed a button on the wiper arm, you can also play the ipod from your i phone through the car speaker system – my kids loved this feature.
- Although I didn’t move the back seats you can lay them flat to give you the capacity of a small van, or you can slide them out altogether which would be very useful for moving things, also you can take out the middle seat giving the remaining two seats lots of room which I think would be great for long trips.
- There is a power outlet in the back and as an accessory you can buy as extra an ice box and have it plugged in and keeping food cool for your picnic !! (or in our case Stephens beers!!!!).
- There is a sensor on the back and sides for reversing, and an image comes up on the radio screen, to show you how close you are to an object – I actually never realised before, how close I come to reversing into things lol!!
Negatives
- Although its supposed to be 3 seats in the back, the middle seat is really only a half seat, I think it would be a squeeze with older kids.
- The driver and passenger side windows at the front have a slightly raised curved bottom on the right hand side, this makes it awkward to take the ticket from car parking machines.
- The back windows are not automatic, which didn’t suit me because Karla ‘thinks’ she’s car sick sometimes and I always lower the window to give her air, the windows are very stiff to wind down, the children found it hard to do.
Stephen thought the car was “grand for me”!!! – he took it for a run and came back to say it “wouldn’t do 100 mph” – he wouldn’t tell me where he ‘leagally’ tested it to do 100 mph ???
This has actually prompted me to do a post on my ideal car and also to highlight where car manufacturers are ‘going wrong’ or should I say where they could do better with their designs!!
Here’s what Eavan’s family had to say;
My son’s first impression when he heard we were reviewing the car was “eh, do you think you work for Top Gear ??!!’‘ I replied “yeah, the IrishMoms version of Top Gear, which one of the guys do you think I am like?” Jamie replied “hmm, James May – Captain Slow!!” Well, I could only respond to that by laughing and telling him that he’d better watch this space cause we were going to be bringing home a nice, shiny new car very soon!
In anticipation of the car arriving, my daughter Aoife, decided to do a little research of her own on the Internet about the car – quite simply because none of us were familiar with what it looked like. I’m going to be polite when I say that she was a little unimpressed with the look of the car, then again she is 14 and loves all things in life to be “cool” and in any teenagers eyes, a family car of any description is just about as “uncool” as you can get!
I have to say I liked a lot of things about this little car, but there were also many things I didn’t like. On my list of “likes” would be the radio & bluetooth enabled feature; the massive amount of space in the boot (trunk!), the fact that all the rear seats could be repositioned, removed or just left as they are using a very simple to use, click and glide system (very easy for Moms to use!!); all the rear seats are independent of each other and can be reclined or put upright without interfering with the child in the seat beside you (very important for stress-free journeys!), very easy to park with the sensors; very quiet on the road.
On the list of things I didn’t like; the central locking seemed a bit awkward as I seemed to have great difficulty getting the remote sensor to unlock the rear doors for the kids (I have central locking on my own car so am well used to using it, but it just didn’t seem to be working correctly on the Roomster) – I had to continuously press the button to unlock the rear doors, and on a few occasions had to do it from inside the car using the button beside the gear stick.
Like Yvonne said, I also didn’t like the shape of the rounded corners on the driver and passenger side windows, they were very awkward when trying to reach out to pay for parking tickets.
When we got the Skoda Roomster, the fuel tank was full, we drove over 600km during the week and were amazed that we didn’t need to refill it as there was still fuel in the tank. However the day before we were returning it, I filled it with petrol, just to see how economical it had been, (with a 1.3 engine I was expecting great things!!). The guy in the filling station worked out that it was doing 38 MPG - I was very unimpressed with this (it cost me €69 to refill the tank) and I still had to put more petrol in it to return it to Dublin with a full tank the next day (incidentally it cost another €10 to top it up again the next day). Comparing it to my own car (a 1.9 diesel engine) I found the Roomster to be a lot more expensive to run, probably because it’s a petrol engine.
The seats in the back are quite compacted and as I have 4 kids, it is just as well that the little one is only 6 years old, as I don’t think I would fit 3 teenagers comfortably in the rear seats (the middle of these seats is very small).
Looks wise, I felt that the car had more of a “van” look about it and maybe the designers could have gone to greater lengths to make it a little bit sexy! (Probably why my teenage daughter was unimpressed with the look of it!)
Overall though, I would say the Skoda Roomster is a nice little car, it would be perfect for an urban family as it’s so easily parked. It would also be perfect for a Mom who has young kids and needs push-chairs or prams with her on every journey as there was tons of space in the boot, to fit shopping in along with all the stuff that needs to be brought everywhere for a young baby or toddler. My kids are probably too big for us to use it as a family car (well, there are 6 of us and only 5 seats in the car) but I did enjoy driving around in this nice, new, shiny car for the week that we had it!
