Skoda Fabia estate emits 89g/km

Jon Hardcastle wrote:

When someone is seriously interested in this type of car do you really think they are too bothered if it gets to 60 in two weeks let alone 15 seconds? Why is a 0-60 of such importance to so many people any way?

0-60 is the traditionally quoted performance figure for all cars. I don't think it's the best figure they could use - it'd be nice if manufacturers could quote 0-20, 30-70, 50-70, 30-0 and 70-0 as a matter of course. Why does it matter how fast this car goes? Well, unless a vehicle is genuinely terminally slow (loaded 2.5NA Defender) then most people with attempt to merge on to a motorway travelling roughly 60mph, will "make a dash for it" at a roundabout or will overtake something travelling slowly on an A road. While 0-60 isn't the best indicator of ingear performance as a rule of thumb I go by any diesel car that can get from rest to 60 within 13 seconds provides enough "punch" for everyday driving. A petrol car tends to be sub 12 seconds as, especially at higher speeds you're having to rev the nuts off it. Now this Fabia estate will probably often be carrying 200-300kg in passengers and luggage, 75bhp and 133lbft of torque just doesn't sound like quite enough - 85bhp and 140-150lbft of torque and I think you have a car that is not "dangerously slow (to its occupants or other road users)". I really admire the headline emissions and fuel economy figures, I just wonder if the real-world economy will be significantly reduced as you'll be hammering the throttle constantly just to keep up (look at the Roomster - the 1.9 diesel gets the same economy in the real world as the 1.4 as the 1.4 has to be worked hard to keep up with traffic)