The Skoda Fabia vRS diesel, in addition to being an accomplished junior hot hatch, sits in insurance group 9 and has affordable running costs and is therefore perfect if you are looking for a cheap young driver insurance quote

Skoda Fabia vRS

Hmm, a high performance diesel hot hatch! Can this be correct? The answer is yes, the Skoda Fabia vRS diesel is an unconventional but suprisingly effective package as a hot hatch that even offers potentially 50+ mpg with a max speed of 130mph.

This Skoda is a real Q car, its boxy hatchback shape giving little of its sporting prowess away at first glance but utilizing the 1.9 litre PD diesel unit from the VW/Audi group tuned for 130bhp and 228lb ft of torque in such a small car ( remember this exact engine unit was used in large vehicles like Audi A6 Avant where it offered respectable performance) endows the diminutive Fabia with tremendous pull allowing it to pull itself out of tight corners like nothing else in its class with a throttle response to shame many a sportscar.

Although most people dont buy a hot hatch for its fuel economy, with rising fuel prices it has to be a consideration nowadays. The Fabia vRS in diesel form offers a combined cycle economy of 52mpg and in real world terms even when thrashed on country roads will return over 40mpg! Tp put this in perspective most of its petrol counterparts would struggle to return 25mpg during similar driving.

In terms of handling the Fabia is good but not great, certainly better than a Seat Cupra or Polo GTI, but at the limit some way behind a Mini Cooper or a Focus ST. However although not class best this is a seriously quick cross country car with the supple suspension absorbing bumps better than most and the glorious torquey engine surging you forward out of bends. With a six speed gearbox as standard ( although you rarely have to use it so flexible is this engine) and sharp - but not razor sharp - steering, this car is easy to hustle along at speed.

The only downsides to this VW/Audi diesel unit are the noise and inability to rev much beyond 4000rpm. The noise is only slightly tiresome at low speeds where there is a typical pronounced diesel rattle, at spped however this becomes a distant thrum and fades into the background nicely. Being a diesel means that this engine does not like to be thrashed,not neccessarily a bad thing but some petrolheads may notbe impressed as they like to rev into a redline of 6000rpm or more, however the Fabia will offer rapid performance changing gear around the 3000rpm mark as most of the engines grunt is to be found lower in the rev range. Its horses for courses really as many like the relaxed pull of a turbodiesel.

One area where the Skoda Fabia really is a class leader is the list price of just £12375, this makes the Fabia the cheapest small hot hatch by a considerable margin and it even holds on to a remarkable 49% of its value after 3 years (better than a VW Polo), when you combine low list price and depreciation with excellent economy and a low insurance group for such a high performance car, you get class winning running costs of just 35p per mile, making the vRS much cheaper to run than any other small hot hatch.