Skoda Fabia 130 review: Old-school buttons, real driving fun, and a turbocharged grin machine

Skoda’s fastest-ever road-going Fabia blends sharp styling, lively performance, and refreshingly straightforward driver-focused design

The Skoda Fabia 130 combines 175bhp performance, sporty styling, and everyday practicality in a standout warm hatch package.

SKODA FABIA 130
Rating	★★★★★
Price	The regular Fabia starts at €23,455 – this one costs €37,300
Engine	A 1.5ltr TSi turbo petrol unit with a staggering 175bhp
The Spec	Thorough, although for Gen-Zs it might actually be deemed old-fashioned
Verdict	Excellent, practical, plaything without being OTT

IN FAIRNESS to the guys at Skoda, they never seem to miss an opportunity to surprise and delight in equal measure. Not alone do they produce excellence in ordinary cars at a prodigious rate, but they have a knack too of producing extraordinary cars when you least expect it.

Their forays into the world of EVs have more often than not come up with machines which are not alone brilliant in their own right but have also been something of an embarrassment at parent company Volkswagen simply because they are better than anything Wolfsburg has made.

Top that off with their various vRS sporting models which have been as good as, if not better, than most of the competition out there — even from companies which have a longer and much more storied history in the genre.

Also, with normal, regular, day-to-day cars, they have a historic tendency to design and build things which come completely out of left field. Take the much-missed Yeti, for example.

Although no longer in production (they stopped building them in 2017), it was a compact SUV which was dear to many people’s hearts and I know of loads of people who still seek them out and revere them — like my good friend Don — in a fevered sort of way.

Although not a particularly voluble guy, Don will waffle on at great length about the two he has still owns — at the time of printing, anyway — (Trigger and Betty the Yeti, respectively) and their many merits. In my company, he is wasting his sweetness on the desert air as it was me who persuaded him to buy one in the first place.

Yeti aside, you have to look no further than the Fabia, Octavia, or Superb and all the loyal punters who swear by them to understand the connectivity between the company, its products, and the buying public. These are cars that connect with people in a very different way than most.

The Skoda Fabia 130 combines 175bhp performance, sporty styling, and everyday practicality in a standout warm hatch package.

And when you get more specific, those vRS versions of various Skodas down the years have a fanbase that other manufacturers — such as Ford and Opel, for example — would love to recreate. They once had it with many RS and GSE/i models over time, but they lost it and can’t figure out why.

All that brings us neatly to this week’s tester, the Skoda Fabia 130. In times past, Skoda stuck with the Monte Carlo version for those wishing for smarter Fabia motoring. This one is a different kettle of haddock altogether, and while it might be the fastest road-going Fabia (ie, non-rally) that’s been built, it also marks a number of ‘130’-related Skoda landmarks.

It was released last year on the company’s 130th anniversary; it has a power output of 130kW; and one of Skoda’s most renowned rally cars back in the day was the Skoda 130. So, as you can see, this was always something they were going to put a bit of effort into.

The V130 has avoided the somewhat clumsy approach by car makers to making sporty versions of standard cars — spooling up the turbo boost and lashing together a fancy-dan bodykit. Not so here, where attention to detail has been pretty exhaustive, and it shows.

Take the engine in this one, for example. It is a 1.5 TSi turbocharged petrol unit with which many of you will be familiar, as it’s utilised in several VW Group products. In this case, however, it is an ‘Evo 2’ version with — I don’t want to bore the non-techies among you, but — such as a larger intake plenum, new rocker arms, hardened pins, and upgraded charge air pipes.

I don’t normally get into such technical details because it bores most people rigid. But in this instance, these details are worth noting because they give a glimpse of the exactitude of the detailing involved.

The net result of this work is that power output has been pumped up to 175 bhp — a 23 bhp increase on the regular 1.5 TSI engine — and will sprint from zero to 100km/h in 7.2 seconds and top out at 227km/h.

Now, these days, those figures are not at all eye-popping with regard to the hot hatch segment, a fact which has led the Fabia 130 to be described as a ‘warm’ hatch rather than a hot one. Personally, I thought that designation sells the car short somewhat — and especially so as the hot hatch brigade has diminished in number so much lately — but there you go.

Getting back to the detailing, though, take a look at the front end of this car, and you will find a deep airdam which actually has some quite intricate aerodynamic features such as tiny winglets at its outer edges, which, once more, indicate the level of work put into this thing.

In its ‘Magic Black’ paint job, the front-end look is somewhat scabrous, but it’s eye-catching and delivers a clear message: this thing means business. Sitting on 18-inch alloys and some 15mm lower than any normal Fabia, the look is a statement of intent. But it is a statement the car lives up to.

There is a big diffuser at the rear, through which pokes a twin-exit exhaust, and you also have red brake callipers, so all the visual signposts are there to distinguish it from anything normal.

And when you start it up, there’s a deep rasping exhaust note (especially when it’s in ‘Sport’ mode) and the automatic DSG ’box can be transformed into a sequential one, although you do have to use the gear stick manually for this, as there are no steering wheel paddle-shifters.

Around town, the occasional crater may necessitate orthodontal attention as the suspension is very stiff, but once out on the open road, this thing demonstrates its class. The chassis is very stable, and a revised stability control package is forgiving to the point that it doesn’t ruin the fun.

The ride is not in any way boneshaking, and the handling felt joyously hot.

The Skoda Fabia 130 combines 175bhp performance, sporty styling, and everyday practicality in a standout warm hatch package.

FOR anyone who drove cars prior to, say, 2010, the interior will feel very familiar and — dare I say — easy to live with. There are loads of knobs, switches, buttons, and dials for all the primary controls, and the infotainment system sticks largely to controlling just the stereo, sat nav, and the stuff you like it to manage.

There are no unfathomable menus to scroll through to in order to get the car to do something like opening the glove box; the digital instrumentation binnacle is highly organisable, and for sheer driver-friendliness (and safety), it’s a bit of a throwback and all the better for it. In fact, the design beats most modern cars into a tin hat — including all too many from VW itself.

This is a supermini, so boot space is limited and nascent basketball players will not be too comfortable in the rear seats, but as the driver, you won’t really care. Even so, it retains much of the regular Fabia’s practicality and ease of use.

I really liked this car, particularly as it demonstrates clearly how a few bob and a bit of elbow grease can turn a normal supermini into something with guts and brio.