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My parents owned a 2001 from new one until recently when it was sadly written off.
The 2.0 was a great engine with no real faults except one error logged in it first year(Mass air flow sensor). Reasonably powerful, great for touring Europe. Engine is simple in design which is a bad thing if your priority is up to date efficiency but a great thing if you want older car long term ownership (reliable and cheap/simple to fix). The car never had to be topped up with oil between services. I know an example of this engine in car with well over 250k miles on the clock. For some reason it was also great on tyres (40k+ on a set) - better than my Octavia 1.4 Classic.
Re the auto gear box - It was always reliable and did the job reasonably well. However it may have been my driving style compared to my dads (it uses some sort of fuzzy logic) but the timing of it's gear changes somehow didn't seem to line up with what I was expecting. A few times on overtaking it was reluctant to kick down but when slightly accelerating on a motorway incline it did like suddenly changing down when gentle top gear acceleration was all that way required.
It's economy was not great around town but my dad frequently broke the magic 40mpg barrier on long runs. You really need to be driving over 50mph for torque converter lock up giving maximum efficiency.
All in all a good car though.
Edited by Big John on 19/10/2011 at 22:13
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