Long-term test: Skoda Yeti 1.6TDI Elegance Greenline II

As the Yeti’s time with AM extends from weeks into months the new car smell, look and feel fades very quickly, particularly as each driver – and their loved ones – make their own mark on the car, sometimes too literally.

Ours was beginning to show the effects of business trips and weekends away – car parking tickets, a 50 pence piece that no one will claim, part of an orange peel and sweet wrappers lying tantalisingly out of reach and wedged between seat and centre console.

I bit the bullet and rather than wasting time attempting to put things right myself with an old vacuum cleaner in the garage, which has about as much power as a Toc H lamp, I paid for an interior clean from a valeter in our office car park.

An hour in the hands of a mobile magician and I was struck by the psychological impact of a clean car.

Not wishing to make anyone suck eggs, but the influence of this £8 spruce up is not to be underestimated.

So, if I’d taken the Yeti to a dealer for a routine ie dull, inconvenient, time consuming service, and it was returned to me sparklingly clean what would I think?

Not only would the dealer get full marks (Skoda hasn’t yet introduced a consumer ‘star’ rating of its dealers online unlike other carmakers), but it would remind an owner of the unparalleled pleasure of getting into a new car for the

first time and all the positive reasons why topped their choice list.

A colleague spoke of the opposite effect of having left his Ford Focus at a dealer for a week for a repair and having paid £1,000 for the work found that the time and money spent hadn’t been enough to warrant a valet from the dealer. The negative feelings towards the car and the dealer were on a par.

Tne thing to note around interior cleanliness is the robustness of the Skoda build quality and materials used.

The leather seats in our Yeti are proving up to the challenge of numerous bodies of all sizes and I confess guitars and associated musical clutter being thrown unceremoniously onto the backseat or boot.

The knocks and bangs this entails has not caused any lasting and unsightly scuffs in the interior and the interior of the car has held up well and retains its newness, helped by the lemony scented valet.