Octavia wagon vs Passat Wagon

[space-godzilla]

Thanks guys for the feedback. I was aware the Passat is built on a different platform however these two cars share some common features, in particular for me the DSG gearbox (I love them)

I dropped into one of the Canberra VW dealerships today and saw the 2010 Passat packages, great shame to see they dropped the 2.0 TFSI and 103KW TDI although the price of the 125kw TDI has dropped albeit @ 51k IMHO given competition they are struggling.

I live in Canberra and have found every visit to both of our VW dealerships (aka Skoda) to be painful. The level of service in at the Honda dealership was second to none, however the VW dealers seem to be lumped with an attitude not becoming the $ I want to spend.

I'm happy to shop around OZ and would love to get some feedback (or pointers to a forum thread) re some solid dealers to liaise with remotely when purchasing either an Octavia or Passat (the verdict is still out)

I can pretty much back up everything that people have been saying about Colin at Lennock Skoda. I was interested in a 2008 RS demo that they had on their lot about six months ago and while it was a little hard to get his attention initially, he really went all out to make the deal work, including working with their financing guy to stay within my stated fortnightly budget. He let us take the car for the weekend (Sat afternoon to Mon morning) and that really helped my wife decide. In the end, we bought the Skoda from Colin and we are very happy with it. We downsized from a petrol Prado and although I miss the little fridge that it had, I think that we've about halved our fuel bill with the diesel RS.

Having said all that, when I was looking, I did e-mail Brian Young at Central Coast Eurocars in Gosford (they also had a 2008 RS demo at that time) and he was very helpful.
But they seem to only be advertising two cars currently and $34,990 seems a little expensive for a 2008 Octavia.

Yes, driving on the coarse chip that they seem to be repaving Canberra roads with recently can be a little noisy but I don't really notice it. And it's probably no worse than in my 2008 Civic.

My sister in California has two Passat wagons and she and her husband love them. Unfortunately, I've never driven one while I've been there for a visit so I can't really compare the RS to a Passat.