I feel bad mentioning it, because it’s not the brand’s fault when a person crashes a car: but the car crashes in the news recently, the ones that left several injured or involved a mountain, often seem to have featured a Seat Leon (not always the Cupra, though, which is the hottest of the Leons, my ST280 the hottest of the hot, at 276bhp).
In the UK we’d call the size the “small family car” and be led to wonder what kind of family would like to drive it; in Europe, it’s a C-segment, small but not the smallest, and it recalls the time in a person’s life when they like to fill their car with friends. Your 20s, in other words; not your 30s – by then, your friends have their own cars, or you have dropped them, and anyway, you are all too drunk to drive.
With that in mind, the styling looks a bit grown up, with a larger-than-expected rear end (the boot is really capacious) and a geometric sensibility around its headlamp cluster that looks like a dated Habitat print. Then the interior tries to catch up with the future, with a flat-bottomed steering wheel that made me want to wear driving gloves and cultivate a menacing laugh, and a shiny dash trim that I found a bit tiring on a long drive (it reflected in just the tiniest way to be noticeable).
Control-wise, everything is the way you’d want it: no paddles in funny places, or “innovations” that cordially invite you to read the manual. The satnav is good – giving you a truncated version of your instructions on the small central screen between the binnacles – the Bluetooth works, and the Media System Plus can handle your iPod. The driving posture, bolt upright on two-tone seats, invites decisiveness.
But what is the point of all this shine and polish? Its performance, doofus: at 6.1 seconds for zero to 62mph, it has a huge amount riding on the affections of people who would prefer to be on a motorbike, or MDMA. In fact, the acceleration in the lower gears feels a bit screechy and embarrassing, but as you move through them, you realise you can, in fact, fly. It was the quickest car of its class ever around the Nurburgring. The cornering balance is good, the steering is responsive; I experienced my control as absolute.
It’s not economical, but it puts you in a kind of speculatively dangerous mood, growing more reckless with the drive. Come on! You know you want to.
Seat Leon Cupra: in numbers
Price £29,205
Top speed 155mph
Acceleration 0-62 in 6.1mph
Combined fuel consumption 42.2mpg
CO2 emissions 157g/km
Eco rating 6/10
Cool rating 7/10
