[eye30]

Weekly car magazine Auto Express has compiled a list of more than 50,000 car owners' opinions of their own motors, and you might – or might not – be surprised at who gets top spot. Do you agree?

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[AlanHo]

Pure adulterated and skewed garbage aimed squarely at the gormless and gullible.

[Shambles]

I bought it

[Keith]

Fiesta is UK's most bought car...
Then again it depends who's figures and data you look at!

Best-selling cars 2014 | Auto Express

Best selling cars | Carbuyer

The UK?s best-selling cars in January 2014 - January?s top 10 best-selling cars:

[AlanHo]

The survey was favourite cars - not necessarily the best selling.

My favourite would be a Bugatti or Ferrari - but I can't afford one.

[John B]

I bought it

 

[Phil №❶]

I bought it

 

[Dazzler]

I'm a bit partial to the Skoda Superb diesel but the price of Skodas has eased up in recent years and their resale is questionable (but so is Hybrid resale) 

Yes, an Elegance 125 TDI would be quite nice!

2013 Skoda Superb 3T Elegance 125TDI MY13 Direct-Shift Gearbox - carsales.com.au

[Keith]

The survey was favourite cars - not necessarily the best selling.

My favourite would be a Bugatti or Ferrari - but I can't afford one.

Yea, but buying means at least putting some money where your mouth is.

And that's what I was illustrating...

Like, "well a Lambo is out of my price range so I'll buy a Fiesta" 

Do most people really aspire to becoming Skoda owners when they dream?

[Dazzler]

Do most people really aspire to becoming Skoda owners when they dream?

There is not the same stigma with cars like the Skoda in Australia. Just not that well known by the average Joe Blow over here. I rented an Octavia a year or two ago and very impressed. MY mates tweaked Octavia is a nice car too! 

[Doggie 1]

There's a stigma in my mind with Skoda, emanating from my childhood in the U.K.

[Dazzler]

There's a stigma in my mind with Skoda, emanating from my childhood in the U.K.

Yeah, but you used to be a whinging POM  (only joking folks - my Dad is a POM)

[Doggie 1]

I remember Wartburgs too (and not that fondly).

[Dazzler]

Learn something every day (never heard of them) Just did a Google! 

[Just Rick]

There's a stigma in my mind with Skoda, emanating from my childhood in the U.K.

Same here Dave,skoda back in the sixties and early seventies over here tried flooding the market with cheap cars,people flocked to the showrooms and then regretted it later down the road(Literally)

Don't care how far technology has advanced,I would buy a Skoda in a drunken pink fit

[Just Rick]

I remember Wartburgs too (and not that fondly).

They actually look very similar to many of the early Skoda's,wonder if both companies were sharing the same designer back then

My last post was supposed to say WOULDN'T BUY a Skoda in a drunken pink fit

[Doggie 1]

I got your drift. 
As a teenager, we used to live in Birmingham (U.K.) and I remember our next door neighbour buying a Wartburg estate (wagon) new.
I understand why people did, because they were the same price as a good quality second hand car, but they were cheap & nasty.
Like Moskovics of that era.

[AlanHo]

Skoda are owned by VW who have done a remarkable job in bolstering the Skoda brand.

Skoda use VW platforms, running gear, engines and transmissions and a myriad of other parts in a body shell intended to look Skoda retro brought up to date.

They are solid and reliable vehicles but no longer enjoy a huge price advantage over rivals. Like Hyundai - they now have to compete with other brands on merits and not low price.

[Keith]

I got your drift. 
As a teenager, we used to live in Birmingham (U.K.) and I remember our next door neighbour buying a Wartburg estate (wagon) new.
I understand why people did, because they were the same price as a good quality second hand car, but they were cheap & nasty.
Like Moskovics of that era.

And ran with 2 stroke smoke machines as a power plant!

[Doggie 1]

 

[AlanHo]

The Trabant 601 produced by VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau  was  a memorable car. It was not fitted with a horn - there was no need - it could be heard from a mile away.



The engine for the 500, 600, and original 601 was a small two-stroke engine with two cylinders, giving the vehicle modest performance. However, the combination of the vehicle's very light curb weight (~600 kg / 1100 pounds) with the engine's ability to go quickly to high revs made its acceleration between 30–50 km/h quite formidable. Given also the very fast gear shifts possible with the gear stick on the right side under the steering wheel, in a skilled driver's hands, the Trabant could easily outperform modern cars in short sprints between traffic lights. First gear, slide towards engine and push down, second gear, up, third gear, go to neutral then slide gear lever towards you and push down, fourth, up! Shifting gears up is easier than it sounds, changing from third to second takes a bit of getting used to! A bit like the pedals actually (all moved towards the centre of the car due to wheel arch) and the ABS free brakes system...

At the end of production in 1989, the Trabant delivered 19 kW (26 horsepower) from a 600 cc (37 cu in) displacement. The car took 21 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h (60 mph); the top speed was 100 km/h[6] (70 mph). Amongst various techniques often implemented in kitchen conditions to boost the car performance were: lowering cylinder heads, polishing the engine's intake manifolds and modifying carburetors. It was not uncommon to reach speeds of 130 km/h (the dial going beyond the blue signal light on a tachometer) on flat terrain with an empty car.

There were two main problems with the engine: the smoky exhaust and the pollution it produced – nine times the hydrocarbons and five times the carbon monoxide emissions of the average European car of 2007. The fuel consumption was 7 l/100 km (40 mpg-imp; 34 mpg-US).[7] Since the engine did not have an oil injection system, two-stroke oil had to be added to the 24-litre (6.3 U.S. gal; 5.3 imp gal) fuel tank[8] every time the car was filled up, at a 50:1 or 33:1 ratio of fuel to oil. Gas stations of the time, in countries where two-stroke engines were common, served premixed gas-oil mixture from the pump. Today, owners normally carry a container of two-stroke oil in the car for this purpose. Because the car lacked a fuel pump, the fuel tank was placed above the motor in the engine compartment so that fuel could be fed to the carburetor by gravity; a trade-off of this design was an increased fire risk in front-end accidents. Earlier models had no fuel gauge; a dipstick was inserted into the tank to determine how much fuel remained.

The Trabant was a steel monocoque design with roof, boot/trunk lid, bonnet/hood, bumpers/fenders, and doors in Duroplast. Duroplast was a hard plastic (similar to Bakelite) made of recycled materials: cotton waste from the Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry, making the Trabant the first car with a body made of recycled material.[5] The results of some crash tests showed it performed better than some contemporary Western hatchbacks