View of a Roomster - Buying and owning

The car is scheduled to go on sale in the UK in November and will be pitched against cheap mid-sized MPVs as well as lofty supermini-based flexi-cars. With Skoda renowned for value, expect prices to start below £10,000.

There are likely to be three trim and equipment packages in the UK, but what they'll be called, what you'll pay and what will come as standard has yet to be decided.

However, it's likely the trim names will be different to those adopted for the Fabia and Octavia. We'd expect at least four airbags to be standard, alongside air-conditioning, a CD player, a height-adjustable driver's seat, two-way movement of the steering column, roof rails and powered front windows.

What you won't see – at least in the immediate future – are Volkswagen and Seat versions of the Roomster. Both companies already have larger mid-sized cars with some MPV capability (Seat Altea, VW Golf Plus and VW Touran, all based on the current Golf) and Skoda deliberately avoided adding a copycat model in order to offer something distinctive.

The UK is likely to import around 6000 Roomsters a year, a modest total alongside the 16,000 Fabias and 18,000 Octavias sold here.