I've had the car for a few days now and the first impression is that the engine is a lot noisier than I expected. When pulling away and accelerating there's quite a loud burble from under the bonnet and it's even noisier inside the cabin at idle than either the old 1.8TDCi or our Mk2.5 1.8HE petrol.

After a few days of ownership I find I always notice things that I didn't notice on the test drive (and we had quite a long drive) and I didn't really notice the engine noise that much but driving through town yesterday I really did notice it. I got the impression from test reports that it was surprisingly refined for a 3-cylinder engine so I wonder if this is normal.

I'd try and compare with another side by side as they should be very quite inside, I often forget to turn mine off when refuelling, the face-lift version is slightly quieter then pre face-lift, with much less waste gate noise :( less Road noise :)

I've had mine for about a month now , find the engine from inside the car very quite, I wouldn't call it noisy .

There is a nice deep noise when acclerting which I think sounds great but not overly noisy .

When just cruising around it's very quiet .

If it gets too gruff your aren't giving it enough gas when pulling away.

It does burble though. I think it sounds great.

Sounds like it's normal, then. I don't object to the burble and as long as it's reasonably quiet in the cruise I won't be too bothered. I was just interested to know if it is normal.

There is another thing that I've noticed, and that's the handling. The steering doesn't have a very strong self-centring action and this seems to make it very sensitive to the road surface and crosswinds. I get the feeling that if I take my hands off the wheel it will just veer off. Again this is much more pronounced than with the Mk2.5 and the old Mk1.5. I know the reviews have said that the light engine makes it very responsive to the steering and I have found it very easy to flick through traffic calming chicanes etc, whereas the old Mk1.5 with the heavy diesel lump always seemed a bit reluctant to change direction. I just wonder, though, whether I need to get a 4-wheel alignment check done.

If this doesn't sound normal to you guys I might try to get the stealer to do it while it's under warranty.

What size wheels you got?

16" and your question turned up something I hadn't noticed. I just went out to check and discovered that the front tyres are mismatched. Three tyres are ContiPremium Contact 2, which I take to be original, the fourth is a Goodyear Efficientgrip. I imagine this was replaced due to a puncture but if it were me I would have replaced like for like or else replaced them as an axle set. The tyre size is 215/55R16 speed rating 93H.

I think the tyres are wider than on the mk2.5 so that will contribute to tramlining.

The weight of the engine might a bit too as it is quite light.

If you have missed matched tyres I would expect that to have the biggest influence though as they will each follow the road differently.

Yes, the tyres on the Mk2.5 are 205/55R16. For the time being it might help a bit to swap the Goodyear onto the back.

Yeah I love the burble the 3 pot makes!!

Mine seems fine on 18" alloys only thing id say is turning circle is not great.

mine is quiet, as for your steering, as you noted tyre makes best on the front the same. mine doesnt veer off. but i know my wheel alignment is spot on.