Skoda Fabia 130 is a 174bhp hot hatch for under £30k
Along with more power the hot Fabia gets revised suspension and steering
Weeks after we caught the car testing on the Nurburgring, Skoda has taken the wraps off its hot new Fabia 130 - a spicy hatch that serves as a birthday present for the Czech firm’s 130th anniversary.
Priced at £29,995 with orders opening on 30 October, the Skoda Fabia 130 is based on the £24,290 Monte Carlo model - but comes with a host of performance-focused upgrades to help turn it into a rival for the MINI Cooper S.
MINI’s hot hatch is currently priced from just over £28,000 by dealers on our Buy A Car service while the VW Polo GTI starts from around £32,000. With no vRS hot hatch version of the current Fabia, the 130 is positioned as the range-topper of the supermini’s line up and splits these two rivals on price, although the Polo does offer 199bhp and the MINI 201bhp.
At least the Fabia 130’s engine is more powerful than the options you’d find elsewhere in the Fabia range. It’s a reworked version of the VW Group’s widely-used 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine and in the Fabia 130 it gets a new intake, along with revised dampers and rocker arms to take power from 148bhp to 174bhp.
Although torque remains the same at 250Nm, the Fabia 130’s extra grunt means it dispatches the zero to 62mph sprint in 7.4 seconds (0.6 second quicker than the standard Fabia and over two seconds faster than the diesel-powered Mk1 Fabia vRS). The Fabia 130 tops out at 142mph - making it the quickest production Fabia to date.
Skoda hasn’t just upped the power and left it at that, the Fabia 130 gets some chassis upgrades too. There’s sports suspension that lowers the car by 15mm and recalibrated steering ‘for greater precision and feedback’. Skoda’s also added new ‘Normal’ and ‘Sport’ driving modes along with a new traction control system, the automatic seven-speed DSG gearbox has been fettled as well.
To ensure the Skoda Fabia 130 isn’t mistaken for the regular car, Skoda has added ‘130’ graphics to denote the brand’s birthday alongside 18-inch alloy wheels, twin exhaust tips, a diffuser, spoiler and a new front splitter. The interior gets some tweaks in the shape of sport seats, stainless steel pedals and DSG paddles behind a three-spoke steering wheel.
Being based on the Monte Carlo, the Fabia 130 also receives LED headlights, keyless go, a rearview camera and metallic paint.
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