Skoda Roomster

The 86 and 105PS 1.2 TSI (EA111) that arrived with the 2010 facelift uses a small simplex chain driven by an hydraulic tensioner that wears and lets the chain stretch. Fault File puts typical onset at 60,000-80,000 miles on cars that ran the long service intervals, with a metallic rattle on cold start that fades after a few seconds; owner forums report the chain being noisy for months before skipping a tooth, which bends valves and destroys the engine. A chain, tensioner and guide job is a fair used-car invoice, but a jumped chain on a cheap Roomster is effectively a write-off.

The Roomster shares the Fabia/Polo PQ34 front axle, and UK potholes and grit take it hard. Fault File's measured MOT record shows bushes and ball joints recorded on 18.5 per cent of tests at 10-15 years old against a 9.0 per cent class average, with owners tracing clonks to drop links, lower-arm bushes and top mounts from around 60,000 miles; Get Car Wise's MOT analysis adds premature front coil spring failure - fractures from the lower coils where corrosion starts - at rates many times the fleet average, documented from as low as 20,000 miles.

Roomsters turn up at the test bench with brakes dragging: Fault File's MOT data records binding brakes on 3.4 per cent of 10-15-year-old tests against a 1.4 per cent class average, and Get Car Wise measures caliper-seizure failures at up to 10.4 times the fleet average across all engine variants, worsening with age and mileage. The usual story is a slide pin or piston corrosion on cars that do short school runs and never get the brakes hot enough to boil off moisture. A seized caliper cooks the disc, drags fuel economy and is an instant MOT fail.