WHAT CAR AWARDS - Skoda takes Car Of The Year for the Fabia & Best Family car for the Octavia.

• New ŠKODA Fabia wins ‘Best Small Car’ category and overall prize
• ŠKODA Octavia wins ‘Best Family Car’ award
• Award presented at glittering ceremony in London’s Grosvenor House hotel
• New Fabia now available in ŠKODA retailers nationwide
• Prices start from £10,600 RRP OTR

The new ŠKODA Fabia has won the prestigious What Car? Car of the Year 2015 award, at a glittering ceremony in London, having also been named ‘Best Small Car’, while the ŠKODA Octavia has been named ‘Best Family Car’. It’s the second time that ŠKODA’s popular small car has won the top prize – the first generation Fabia won the award back in 2000.

The new ŠKODA Fabia – which was revealed to the public at the Paris Motor Show last October, and is in UK showrooms now – is the third-generation of ŠKODA’s popular small car. Since the first-generation Fabia went on sale in 2000, some 250,000 have found homes with British buyers, and 3.5 million have been sold worldwide.

Available in five-door hatch and (from March) estate forms, the new Fabia introduces innovative safety, comfort and infotainment systems to the segment. It features an expressive, dynamic design with smooth proportions, crystalline shapes and clear-cut lines. The new Fabia is also more spacious, stronger and more efficient than its predecessor, thanks both to significant weight-saving and the introduction of cleaner EU6-compliant engines that help to make it up to 17 per cent more efficient.

The award was collected by ŠKODA CEO Prof. Dr. h.c. Winfried Vahland, who said: ‘The new Škoda Fabia is, in every respect, simply more car and offers both innovative technology and emotionally-charged design. It is ideal for the modern, urban mobility of today. We are very confident that the new Fabia will write another chapter in the model’s success story, win over new customer groups and, as an important pillar of our growth strategy, further strengthen the brand.’

What Car? editor Jim Holder said: ‘The Fabia wins not only because it’s a superb small car that’s practical, well equipped and cheap to run, but also because of the rivals it has managed to dispose of in the process.

‘When you consider the strength of the competition the new Fabia has had to beat to top its class, it simply has to win.’

Director of ŠKODA UK, Alasdair Stewart, said: ‘We are delighted to have been given these accolades by What Car?. UK customers trust What Car? when they are buying a new car, and winning the Car of the Year award is the perfect introduction for the new Fabia on the UK market.

‘We’re excited about the Fabia; it’s a key model for our retailers and also for our customers. This award sets us up perfectly for the year ahead. The new Fabia’s just the start of another exciting year for ŠKODA – the new Fabia Estate will be here in March, and the new Superb will be on the roads in September. The buying experience is also going to be better than ever, thanks to our retailers transforming their showrooms with a new look.’

The ŠKODA brand has demonstrated its strength with five years of record growth, culminating in sales of 76,027 cars in the UK last year (some 10,000 more than in 2013), and over one million cars worldwide in the same period.