Funnily enough I did look at the Optima as well. I am going to go and test drive one and see what they are like to drive.

I do like the superb though - if only for the umbrellas in the doors!

For the Optima,

Look on the Kia approved website, and don't forget to check service history for that OM warranty

used-uk.kia.com/used-car-details/used-kia-optima-1.../

I can recommend Tower Hill, near watford.

Edited by _ORB_ on 07/04/2021 at 20:16

We have driven 4 Octavias, 3 estates and a hatch 3 of which were petrol's and one a diesel. 3 had the simple beam rear suspension and one fully independent. 2 were manuals, 2 DSG. A pretty good mix me thinks.

Whilst the hatch was acceptable (1.4 TSi 150 PS) all 3 estates were anything but with horrendous booming from the rear, its a common observation on the Skoda forum and has been mentioned on here as well. For us it made the estate unacceptable but as noted above the hatches are very spacious unless you need to carry wardrobes etc and we even have a dog in hatch back cars. At that point we spoke to the salesman about placing an order Via Carfile for the 1.4 TSi 150 PS hatch in SE-L trim with a few options but that very day the order book had been closed for 4 months minimum waiting for the revised model to arrive. That put us back to the start line.

The salesman suggested we look at the Superb hatch but initially we thought it too large but after being lent a 1.4 TSi 150 PS in SE trim or the morning we were converted, better refinement by far, better trim and more space yet did not drive like a huge car and spoke to the salesman about placing an order via Carfile. Looking at specs the SE Superb suited us better than the SE-L Octavia, it missed a few unimportant to us bits but many of the options we needed on the Octavia were standard on the Superb. Once priced up the Superb actually worked out slightly less. Ordered one, took almost 4 months but worth the wait. Replaced it with another Superb last October (a iV PHEV this time), very satisfied with the model.

Regarding fuel economy the Superb 1.4 TSi is surprisingly good, over almost 4 years it averaged just over 45 mpg but on a 1000 miles Scottish road trip (we do it twice a year) it would average about 53 mpg. The best diesel mpg we have had in the past was a 1.6 CRDi Kia Ceed 115 PS, 51 mpg over 5 years and 56 mpg on the Scottish road trip, but it was nowhere near as quick for overtaking or as refined.

Get some test drives now garages are opening up again.