As motoring deals gets tighter by the week your average car customer is continually looking for a bargain. And quite unsurprisingly Skoda continues to look good in this market.

Their sales in 2018 continue to increase with sales remaining buoyant despite a general decline in the new car market and the brand achieved a joint-record first quarter market share of three per cent which is up 0.29 per cent over the same period last year.

That means 21,611 Skoda found new homes in the UK in the first three months with 13,300 cars alone in March and among them was the ever-popular Fabia which had a total 5,361 registrations. This is not a figure to sneeze at.

Many of the medium saloons like the Fabia have 1.0-litre MPI petrol engines to start the range. The 1.0 litre engine just continues to get better and better across a number of manufacturers and the turbo charged one on the Fabia is quite brilliant.

As well as a couple of petrol models the Fabia also has three 1.4 diesels with a delightful manual gearbox and of course the excellent DSG autobox should you go for one of those.

The Fabia handling is also good with a nice light steering, firm grip and it handles well around the corners. It is also pretty easy to park in tight spaces because of the steering.

Because it’s a small car doesn’t necessarily mean that it is noisy to drive so there’s no problem to have a conversation with a back seat passenger at 70mph.

There is an impressive amount of rear space for a small car and two adults are comfortable in the back seats. All Fabias have five doors so access to the rear seats is easy.

The vision from the front is good due to the narrow windscreen pillars and the slim rear pillars also cause little obstruction.

The rear seats split 60/40 as standard and fold down to open up the luggage area for bigger loads. The boot is square with a wide opening that makes loading easy. A small boot lip helps when a bulky item happens to be heavy.

Both the driver and front passenger have a large door pocket, and in front of the gear lever there is a large cubbyhole with two cup holders.

There are no parking sensors on the entry level S trim model while rear parking sensors are standard on the mid-specs and upwards.

There is a touchscreen in the centre of the dashboard which is easy to understand with standard features which include Bluetooth and a DAB radio.

Skoda’s technology allows certain mobile phone apps, like sat-nav, via the car’s touchscreen and there are Apple and Android devices.

My 1.0 litre TSI 95 PS which was the top of the range comes in at £16,240 and gave me more than 60 miles to the gallon and I didn’t spare the horses. I could have paid under £15,000 but my extras on the bill was for a touchscreen nav system, front fog lights, hill hold control and a keyless system plus a couple of other items.

Top speed is 115mph and 0-60mph is reached in just over ten seconds The SE has alloy wheels, air-con, rear parking sensors and a leather steering wheel and gearlever but if you go up the scale there are bags of other bits and pieces available, some which are great and some which are unnecessary.

From SE trim upwards, the Fabia gets automatic emergency braking as standard which is designed to do an emergency stop. Go for SE trim and above and you'll also get an.

All Fabias come with six airbags, a tyre pressure-monitoring system and child seat fixings on the rear seats. An engine immobiliser comes as standard, too.

A three-year warranty for 60,000 miles comes as standard with every Skoda who continue to make very good cars these days.