After having written about the railway in the article before my last and then about air travel, I will not turn towards the German’s most loved child. Yes, now our red Renault Scenic started looking rather seamed, my beloved family wanted a new car.
I found it impossible to resist the combined pressure of my huge family, but at least I managed to make them agree to three necessary criteria the car-to-be-bought had to meet:
- 🙂 The colour must be red. For reasons of safety and profiling, I only drive red cars.
- There has to be enough room for my bike in it. Whenever I have a breakdown with my bike, I ask my family to pick it up. And I want it to be easily carried in the car.
- It has to be a sensible new car at a cost of not far above 10,000 Euros
One way or another, I thought this was not going to be easy … but now I know better!
I had formulated the criteria on Sunday afternoon, and no later than Monday afternoon, the sale contract lay in front of me. They had needed little time to find a car that met all my criteria on the internet.
Well, I had assumed it was going to be a Dacia station wagon. After all, I am a Francophile and, where necessary, also a Romanophile.
But no, now I have to turn Czecho-Phile. They selected a Skoda Fabia Kombi. It has a cylinder capacity of 1,200 and 60 horse powers. That is almost twice the power my old “Beatle” had and more then four times that of my “Duck” (2CV 4). And no end of extra outfit, such as air-conditioning, a modern radio with CD player and MP3 connection, tinted windows, lamps all over the interior and in the trunk, a central locking system…
It is a truly full-scale car. Brand new and with modern features, such as driving light… Sitting in it, you get the impression it is as big as like my first (red) Passat Variant. That was the first Passat model ever. And it seems that, if you fold the back seats down, my bike will easily have enough room. I have not yet tried it, but judging by the measurements, it looks good to me.
The total cost, including winter tyres, transfer, registration, number plates, a small TomTom navigation system, emergency kit, warning triangle were still significantly less than 11,000.- Euros. We even managed without the taxi to Emmering recommended for picking it up, because the MVV connection, including the (rather empty) bus on the last leg, was excellent.
It was a new EU registration. Apparently, several thousand of them are sitting around Munich at several car dealers’ places. Common brands are VW, Renault, Citreon, Peugeot, Skoda and many more. The prices are stunningly low. As a general rule, you pay and pick them up. There is neither waiting time for delivery, nor for anything else. And you are always well below the price recommended by the producer.
Well, there was a small problem with our Fabia: the user’s manual was written in Czech. And the reason it is so thick is because it is for all variants of models. But you will find the German manual as a PDF file on the internet. So we printed the relevant pages. It was not very much, because we do not need the pages for the other variants. And now we have a very thin and light-weight handbook…
A few days later, the bomb burst – the tax for the Fabia Kombi with 60 horsepower will be only 48.- €! Mind you, we are not talking every month – we are talking each year! I found this hard to believe.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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