SEAT Leon ST Cupra 4drive 300

No, we haven’t bought one. Just a test drive.


The Cupra Ateca is high on our next car list, so we went to register our interest with the dealer, and they offered us a drive in the Leon, just to give us an idea of the interior, gearbox and engine (and probably try to sell us the Leon. They tried, but we didn’t)


This was an 18MY car, with the new engine (up 10hp to 300hp) and virtual cockpit. It also had full leather (a £1030 option), and SEAT Sound (well worth it).

It was finished in a striking colour called desire red. Sporty SEAT’s have always looked good, and this is no different. I prefer the estate to the hatch too. I also think it looks better than the Golf R estate.


Inside, the interior is pretty much like the Golf, which is no bad thing. Some people say the Golf is better built, but to my eyes they’re about the same. The quality is very good, and the dash layout works well. It has an 8.0 touchscreen with Nav, traffic updates, Apple play etc. I think you can upgrade to a 10.0 screen and a bigger hard drive, but for £1000, I wouldn’t bother. Another thing I wouldn’t bother with is the leather. I’ve never liked leather on ‘mainstream’ manufacturers, and its business as usual here. It felt hard, slippery and absolutely not worth £1000. I’d stick with the standard alcantara seat with leather inserts. The seat itself was a great shape and very comfortable. Options I’d pick would be the SEAT sound, which for £250 seemed a bargain. 9 speakers and a boot mounted sub meant a real powerhouse of sound and excellent clarity throughout the cabin. The other absolute must for me would be the virtual cockpit. It’s a real game changer. The screen was crystal clear and made normal dials seem ancient. You can adjust what is shown on the screen by a button on the steering wheel. If you have Nav on in between the dials, it also means you can have the main screen on something different.


On to the drive then. Tara hadn’t really had any experience with an auto before (apart from some shitty Avensis a few years ago) so she drove it first. You get dynamic chassis control as standard on Cupra’s (£800 option on the Golf R and S3), and there are 4 settings to choose from: Comfort, Sport, Cupra, and Individual. Fire the engine in comfort and it was feeble to say the least. There wasn’t really any sound. She pulled out of the dealers and pottered around in comfort for a bit, and it was just that. Comfortable. The ride was very good for a car with 19 inch wheels, and the gearbox seemed to work really well. This was my biggest reservation, as a lot of reports say the DSG is dim-witted at low speeds, but it was absolutely fine; it shuffled between cogs seamlessly and it was very smooth. Using the paddles was also impressive – instant changes and when I wanted them too.


Into Coombe Abbey car park then and we swap over so I get a go. I left it in comfort for a short while, just to see what it was like. The engine/induction/exhaust sound is, well there isn’t one. Not unless you floor it, and then it just sounds like a typical 4 cylinder – dull and drony. The comfort setting is well worth it though, as its all Tara would ever use, and also great for long journeys - the throttle response is laid back, it rides well, it’s very refined at 70mph, and the engine and gearbox do their thing to keep the revs as low as possible, meaning it was averaging 40mpg on a steady cruise on the A46 and 34mpg overall. In to Sport mode then, and immediately it feels more like my cup of tea. The steering became heavier (although virtually zero feel), the throttle response was now excellent and the engine came alive. Fake or not, it did sound good. Not as good as the 5cyl warble in mine, but good enough and sporty enough that it wouldn’t put me off the car. Weirdly, in my mates S3 and various Golf R’s I’ve heard, you get farts from the exhaust on full throttle up shifts. In this, you got the sporty sound, but no farts. I’ve read reports that the power quoted in CUPRA’s can be slightly conservative, and actually is putting out a different state of tune (i.e. more BHP) to the Golf R or S3, and I can quite believe it, as this felt quicker than my mates S3 and it had only done 800 miles. A combination of the quick DSG box, 300hp and 4wd meant that even on a greasy surface, you could just plant your foot and it would take off like a rocket with no traction issues or fuss through the steering. Try that in mine and it would scrabble like crazy. I’ve got to say it was great fun in that respect. I’m also loving 4wd. I tried a Focus RS recently, and I couldn’t see any downsides – infinite traction, wet or dry, foot down and you just launch out of corners with no fuss. This was more of the same. My biggest fear was 4wd making them feel heavy and cumbersome, but both the RS and CUPRA have felt hugely planted and hunkered down to the road with good turn in. The Cupra would be much quicker than mine across a B-road, although it would be nice to have the steering feel from mine. Even in sport, the ride was never crashy. It was obviously more firm than in comfort, but it never felt poorly damped on any road. It rode just probably on par with my mates 140i in comfort and that’s on 18’s. I was impressed by that. Switching to CUPRA mode and the wick was turned up even more. I only got around 5 mins in Cupra mode, but the first thing that stood out was that the ride was now crashy. Great on a smooth, B-road, but too firm for anything else. It’s hard to say if it felt any more planted in a corner than in sport mode, so I don’t think the extra harshness in the suspension is worth the trade-off. You could use sport mode quite happily every day. You couldn’t in Cupra mode. Then there’s individual mode, so you can tweak each characteristic to your liking, so you could have Cupra engine map and sound, comfy suspension, and sport gearbox. So much choice. Too much choice in fact. Gone are the days where engineers set the damping up to work on every road surface.


It does the ‘all the car you ever need’ thing quite well. It looks good, goes well, drives nicely, is reasonably priced and won’t be that expensive to run. Ultimately, Tara still likes the Ateca more. So if it does all the above, but you just sit ‘a bit higher up’, then I don’t think the Cupra Ateca will be a bad car at all.