Despite all the bank holidays last month, as I write, the Skoda's odometer has just past 2,000 miles, which means I have covered over 1,500 miles in the MotorTorque Skoda Yeti Greenline since my last report. So how have we managed to cover all these miles in such a short time? Well, June was a busy month motoring event-wise. Firstly, the Yeti spent a weekend in Portsmouth, while I attended the Le Mans 24 hour race, plus there were also a couple of trips to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. However, the biggest event for the car involved a trip across the channel with Skoda, for the Ypres Rally in Belgium. Unlike the other journalists who took advantage of the Skoda press fleet, I opted to take my Yeti. There's no doubt the optional Columbus sat-nav is costly at £1,530, but I had the last laugh on this trip. Of the two other journalists I met at the Chunnel, I was the only one that had the European mapping needed to get us to our hotel. So, I ended up leading a very patriotic convoy of Skoda Octavia vRSs' across France to our hotel in Belgium. This will probably be the only time my 105bhp Yeti Greenline will ever be in front of two white and blue 170bhp Octavia vRSs', but it looked really cool. I like music on road trips and varied at that and really appreciated being able to listen to my music via the six-CD autochanger, or via the Bluetooth function on my iPhone and finally my iPod via the aux cable. I've never had so much choice! The weather conditions were decidedly mixed throughout the weekend, but thankfully I had more luck than Skoda UK Rally team driver, Andreas Mikkelsen. He fell off the road on Saturday morning, breaking his front suspension and putting him out the rally. However, despite loosening up nicely, sadly the Yeti hasn't been entirely fault free. On my travels before Belgium, whilst driving round the M25, I heard something fall on to the road, but thought I'd just kicked up some road debris. Whilst giving the Yeti a well deserved wash later on, it was only then that I noticed the rear cap for the roof bar had fallen off. Apparently a one-off, as it hadn't happened to other Yeti owners. I thought this might be my first chance to get to experience the Skoda dealer network and a visit to my dealer, but instead the part was posted to me and I clipped it on in a matter of minutes. I've been trying to drive more carefully to make the most of the Greenline's fuel-saving benefits, but at 51mpg we're still a little way off the Combined MPG figure of 61.4mpg. However, considering the mileage and the fact that on occasions it is difficult to drive frugally, 430 miles to a tank is still pretty useful. My goal is to improve this next month. I've also found that equalising the tyre pressures, has improved the front end grip of the Continental low-rolling resistance tyres. Skoda Yeti Elegance Greenline II Price: £22,670 Engine: 1.9-litre, 4cyl Power: 103bhp, 250Nm Max speed: 109mph 0-60mph: 12.1s Emissions: 119g/km Mileage this month: 2050 Costs this month: £0
