Skoda Octavia TDi vs LPG

Hey guys, I travel to Poland every year with my wife and my father in law needs a new car... hes rocking a old Fiat Cinquecento on LPG right now and needless to say I feel like riding a bicycle is faster than driving that thing. I have been renting a car every time I go to Poland and decided to look for a used car so I can use that there vs renting and just letting the ole man use it.

Looking at 1st gen Octavia TDi Wagons and 5 door liftbacks, which model/engine should I stick with ? My understanding Octavias have been very trouble free cars and even more so than VWs themselves. I found a clean model like this:
http://allegro.pl/skoda-octavia-1-9-tdi-130ps-6-biegow-czarna-perla-i2353884723.html
It doesn't have to be some crazy Octavia VRS monster, if I get a 90HP TDi I will chip it and put some nozzles in it to make it more brisk, but I'm mainly looking at the 130HP versions. Unfortunately most of the listings I look at do not have any engine codes listed.

I would like to add if you have any general feedback on issues that are common to all Octavias of the 1st gen, please let me know. I'm also considering a gas engine one with LPG conversion. In Poland gas is 5.98 ZL - approx 1.50 dollars a liter, and Diesel is about the same price, but LPG is WAY cheap- its 2.75 per liter, which comes out to approx 80 cents.

I am also considering B5 Passats, but with that multilink front end I rather not have to deal with replacing all 8 arms etc right off the bat.

Get the 90 & have it remapped at a TDI specialist. No variable vane turbo to worry about.

Regarding LPG vs. diesel - the cost per mile is pretty similar due to the better mpg on a tdi. The main difference is that the range of the LPG will be a lot lower than the diesel version.

I just came back from Poland a month ago. I was there for 2.5 weeks and rented an Octavia. Few years back my father also rented an Octavia when he wet back. We both loved. The car rental owner is my father's friend and he says that he never had any problems with any Octavias that he rents and he's been a business for couple of years already.

The one I drove was 2nd generation if I remember correctly. TDI. I drove from Warsaw to passed Bialystok on less than a qtr tank, so the mileage is really great. After driving 800km I still had a qtr tank left.
While there I did a lot of city driving too, and you couldn't tell a difference between gas and diesel. Since diesel is about the same price as regular gas, I would go with diesel, and over there every station has it, so availability is not a problem.

Honestly I fell in love with that car. Good luck finding the right car for you and your family!

Lpg is cheap but suffers from small range due to limited tank size and only 80 %fill capacity ,the mpg on most conversions suffers by anything up to 25 %,unless your doing mega miles or being paid by the mile the only way to go is diesel imo.