Hi Desmond,

The newer car looks sharper, but the clear-cut way to tell them apart is at the front, where the Series III model's Skoda badge is mounted on the bonnet itself, not on a strip that forms part of the radiator grille.

For the Series III, the timing belt needs to be changed every 240,000km regardless of time (and then every 30,000km after that) on the petrol cars.

The Series III cars are sold in 1.2 TSI and 1.0-litre petrol variants for the most part, where as Series II models had the 1.2 12v engine, so I suspect we're talking about the Series II in this case.