This is my first post on this site so hi to all. My wife has just come into a little money and she decided to spend some on a new car. We have two medium sized dogs and are fed up with having the back seat down on our 11 year old Micra to accominadate them. So have a look on web sites to se what is arround at prices we could afford and found Honest John and looked at all the reviews. we whittled it down to the following Hyundai Ix20 mini MPV, Kia Venga, Skoda Fabuia Estate and the Skoda Roomster.

We went to the local Maidstone dealers and test drove all found nothing wrong with driving the Ix20 and the Venga in fact quite a nice drive but found that the boot space was not big enough to accomidate a rather athritic old colly and a colly cross lab also the dashboard controls resembled a fighter plane and rather confusing.

We then went to the local Maidstone Skoda Daler and they led us have the Roomster S with theTSI 86 bp engine for the morning to road test so we were able to drive it on motorway, A roads and minor country roads. I was an experience, lovely car to drive. It has reasonable acceleration we got to 80 mph without knowing it on the motorway, great visability all round as you are seated higher than a normal car and a great experience. Here I must say we both have some disabilities the wife has athritus and I have a back injury, Ingress and egress was easy with the larger doors and the seats although firm were very supportive and cumfortable.

Unfortunatly they did not have a Skoda Fabuia estate for us to test drive. We then made an appointment with Caffins Ashford who did have a Skoda Estate again lovely car but found it rather clostrophbic as the rear side windows were rather small and the car felt small and dark. They did not have a petrol Roomster as a test car but had a diesell one but it was SE and what a difference it was light and airey especially as it had the glass sun roof and the seating so versatile so one can carry anything as one could in a van. We paid a deposit on the spot and are expecting delivery at the end of the week or early next week as it is being unload from the ship at Sheerness as I write.

Edited by Avant on 08/05/2013 at 00:58