Skoda Fabia hatchback - Reliability & safety

You only need to take a brief look at our 2020 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey to know that owning a Skoda should be a largely painless experience. Skoda as a brand performed strongly, finishing fifth out of 30 manufacturers with 17.2% of owners reporting a fault in the first year. Safety is good, too, with Euro NCAP awarding the Fabia the full five stars when it was crash-tested in 2014.

Skoda Fabia reliability

The Skoda Fabia didn’t feature in our 2020 Driver Power satisfaction survey. In its last appearance in 2019, it finished 64th out of 100 cars, and didn’t score well for reliability and build quality. However, of the owners who responded, only 11.5% reported experiencing a problem with their cars in the first year of ownership.

Skoda has a good reputation for reliability and prospective owners can rest assured that if something does go wrong, the brand’s dealers will be able to fix it quickly and efficiently.

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Safety

The independent crash-testing body Euro NCAP gave the Fabia a five-star rating when it assessed the car's safety. It comes with plenty of standard safety kit, including curtain airbags, stability control, traction control and braking assistance.

With the arrival of the facelifted Fabia, Skoda's ‘Front Assist’ city braking system became standard for every trim level. This automatically applies the brakes when it senses an imminent low-speed collision, and should dramatically reduce the risk of a crash. In fact, some insurance companies offer reduced premiums for cars fitted with this kind of technology.