Despite
formally not being a car-owner since May 2025, I look after the Octavia (in
papers a company car, under a subsidized scheme, due to be purchased well below
its market value in March 2027) as it was mine. It had the oil changed after
first 1,683 kilometres, then after 1 year with 11,201 kilometres on the clock
and then had a full service after nearly 2 years and 18,502 kilometres. It was
supposed to be a family car, yet life has verified my plans, but a sizeable
estate car has proven useful in Szlachetna Paczka, facilitating moving (friends
relocating from one flat to another) and surprisingly frequently it carries 4
persons on board.
The lesson
learnt when selling the Megane after 14 years is that no matter how perfect the
car might be in terms of mechanics, its softest spot is the undercarriage, not
seen every day, not making itself felt until something cracks up, eaten up
slowly by rust. Some time ago I read statistics a typical Polish car whose last
road is to a scrapyard, ends it useful life due to damage done by rust so such
extent that a vehicle is no longer roadworthy and does not pass the MOT.
Factory protection of bodywork is decent, but when it comes to the
"invisible" chassis, this is where savings in designing cars not
built to last are made. Polish road clearance winter practices only speed up
the pace in which rust wreaks havoc to cars' undersides. Amounts of salt poured
on roads do not correspond with depth of snow cover on roads. As a driver I
would prefer to see the snow mechanically removed, as it is done in northern
Scandinavia and use of salt to be constrained to ice or freezing rain which are
a factual threat to traffic participants.
To make a
vehicle long-lasting, a separate anti-corrosion layer ought to be put on its
undercarriage soon after driving out of a showroom gate. As this costs some
money, Octavia, formally not mine, has not had it done, but as I have found
out, after 3 years first spots of rust might still be cracked down on and the
protective cover still can be applied (albeit the operation will be more
expensive).
By the time
it happens, but afterwards too, an undercarriage wash after winter is a fix. To
do it properly, a vehicle needs to be lifted on a car jack and washed with
dedicated chemicals and then flushed. I found only one car wash in Warsaw which
does it well, but comparing how dirty the undercarriage was ahead of the wash
and how clean it was after, I do not regret any of one hundred seventy nine
zlotys spent on it (and some twenty zlotys forked out for petrol to the other
end of Warsaw and back).
I hope
those treatments will help Octavia be a durable car to keep me company for some
two decades. I realise driving will get more expensive with petrol prices going
inevitably up, but on the other hand, I drive it sparingly and the car is amazingly
frugal beyond town. For the record, between my last long-distance journeys,
i.e. from 4 March to 19 April I drove merely 337 kilometres. On 21 April on its
way back from a workshops somewhere in Dolny Śląsk, the odometer hit
20,000 kilometres. Fuel consumption with 4 persons (3 passengers and me) on
board and their luggage with 120 km/h on tempomat: 5.8 litres per 100
kilometres. No SUV nor a crossover, by dint if their weight and dimension,
could boast of such low appetite for petrol on a motorway!
