Price: £28,380
Top speed: 155mph
0-62mph: 5.8 seconds
CO2: 149g/km
MPG: 43.5
This is the most powerful road-going Seat ever built. It’s the embodiment of the Spanish carmaker’s 20-year quest to create a usable family saloon that goes like the absolute clappers; a car that’s as easy to use as a pair of slippers one minute, as resolute as a sprinter’s spikes the next. It has a gurgling turbocharged petrol engine that generates 290bhp (that’s a lot) and whips you to a top speed of 155mph, slamming you to 62mph in just under 6 seconds. It’s a car for which adjectives like “blistering”, “balls-out” and “hooning” were created. So why am I stuck axle-deep in a muddy field in Wiltshire’s Chalke Valley? Top speed about 2mph…
Well, clearly, the best way to test a high-performance saloon is to take your mother-in-law to a charming history festival where the car park is doing its best impression of a First World War battlefield. And I have to say the race-tuned Seat put in a memorable performance. I blipped the throttle and its low-pro race wheels sent showers of gloopy mud over the volunteers pushing us out.
Back on the tarmac the Leon quickly settles down to doing what it does best. Seat’s engineers have fiddled about beneath the bonnet so that performance from the engine (it’s the same 2-litre used in Golf’s GTi) has been maxed out. This means that with a flick of a rubbery button you can snap out of everyday mode and opt for dynamic handling and white-knuckle acceleration. It certainly spices up your trip to the supermarket.
Seat’s sports division takes its name from Cup and Racing. The “Cupra” programme was launched in 1996 after the brand won the World Rally Championship. The word Cupra is also, apparently, the name of a fertility goddess worshipped by the ancient Etruscans. My mother-in-law was more impressed by this historical reference than my talk of its tweaked 2-litre boy-racer power plant.
The Leon Cupra is a wonder to drive – the engine may have been beefed up but it hasn’t been overwrought. It’s not some twitchy stallion. Squeeze the throttle and the power grows smoothly in a wonderful and satisfying crescendo. Chassis control and progressive steering add to the pleasure.
All good then? Yes, except for one thing: the price. It’s jarringly expensive. The list price is £28,380, but add some metallic paint and a decent sound system and you soon soar past 30 grand. I spend a lot of time marvelling at how much disposable income other people seem to have, but it seems wildly indulgent to blow that much on a saloon racer – no matter how good it is in the mud.
Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166
