I have a 2015 Skoda vRS Wagon (Estate in UK) with the 2.0L 162KW engine and 6 speed manual gearbox, it is great to drive. My wife has 2016 Skoda Rapid Monte Carlo, 82kw 1.2L TSi engine with 6 speed manual gearbox.
Our only issue is Stupid Skoda Australia don't bring those models with manual gearboxes any more so we have to keep them forever because we can't find anything new with a real gearbox apart from really cheap base model cars. If I needed a new car and lived in the UK I would get the Skoda Octavia vRS Estate TSi 245PS with manual gearbox, after owning mine for nearly 8 years it is a great car.
If anything happened to mine I would be trying to see what are the rules for bring in a private import from the UK, I think you need to own it overseas for 12 months but there are probably other rules as well, maybe I could tour the UK in it and probably get a new car quicker than trying to buy locally. Australia is a nice place to live but I hate that we get a restricted number of models with hardly any manuals and regardless of the brand it is "put down your deposit and wait 2 to 3 years for your car to turn up" knowing that by the time you get it the car has gone though two or more model releases so not what you chose anyway. The sales guys seem to feel they are hard done by because they don't get their sales commission until the car turns up but it is hard to feel sorry for them when you have to wait so long for a new car. My Octavia from 2015 was 12 months from order time to when I got it but now after being able to blame COVID I know people who ordered new cars in January 2020 after the Hail storm that wrote off over 30K cars in under 10 minutes that are still waiting for their new car to turn up.
