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My Octavia L&K ownership: Good, bad & scary moments after a 700 km trip

21st November 2022, 16:06 by Rahul Nagaraj

I have to say I have never felt so confident while negotiating curves. The ride was so comfortable that it never makes you tired even after an 8-hour drive.

BHPian mah45 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Wanted to share a quick update on my first long trip in the Octavia L&K and share the Good, bad and some scary moments as well.

(well, I did complete a 700 km trip earlier as soon as I took delivery of the car, but I would say the car's ability wasn't put to test since it was within the first 1000 Kms on the ODO.)

So here it is:

Did a quick trip to Coimbatore from Chennai and back the very next day.
The distance was around 480 km one way.

The car is a beauty to drive. Having driven cars like Nexon and SX4 in India in the past - and a Honda CR-V in the US freeways, the drive in the Octavia was way better.

I have to say I have never felt so confident while negotiating curves.

And the ride was so comfortable that it never makes you tired even after an 8-hour drive.

The ride quality even on bad stretches was simply amazing. There was a 50 Km stretch just before reaching Coimbatore where although it was 6-lane, it was full of patchwork and I could see all other cars almost floating while the Octy was just planted.

Needless to say about the power being delivered, be it the instant acceleration that helped a lot during 2-lane stretches to do a quick overtaking manoeuvre, or maintain good speeds on empty stretches?

The adaptive LED headlights are very good, have a very good throw and literally light the road ahead for quite a distance making driving in the dark quite comfortable.

The seats are so comfortable and it's really a joy to drive.

I found the turning radius also to be quite good which really helped while driving on narrow roads within the city.

Some observations:

The automatic wipers for some reason didn't work when it started raining, I tried to set the position as per the User manual but still didn't, need to check it.
The annoying rattle noise from right below the Infotainment in the centre of the dash keeps coming on bad roads, especially in slow speeds

And the Scary moment:

I park the car on the roadside, lock it and return after almost 10 minutes.
I open the door and hear huge banging noise from the entire car.
I really panicked as to what was happening, tried unlocking and locking the car, went around the car, and locked it once again but the noise just doesn't stop
It was so huge that every passerby could hear it.
It was as if the entire car was shaking.
Finally, after almost 5-minutes it stops.
I drive the car to the hotel and park it, call the SA but as expected they ask me to bring the car to run diagnostics.
It was almost closing hours.
The local SA said it could be a flywheel issue, but the engine was not even On when I faced this issue.

After some searches, found this in a forum, and it describes the exact same issue that I faced.

Only in my case, it continued for quite some time before stopping.

Will take the car to the Service station to check this soon.

Btw a picture where the beauty on top of the compound wall seems to wonder what is this object with almost the same colour as me.