| Long Term Test | SEAT Leon 2.0 TDI Sport |
| Arrival date: | | December 2008 |
| Price: | | £18,197 (including £1,317 of options) |
| Current mileage: | | 4,800-miles |
| Average economy: | | 38.9mpg |
| Relevant links: | |
Euro NCAP results for SEAT Leon
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Been anywhere interesting?
It's been an interesting few weeks for the Leon: it's helped us move house and been left in a Hethel car park for six days. And though the latter doesn't sound like too significant a sojourn, don't be fooled: the Leon was waiting to take me home after a week with a particularly special Elise, which meant our sporty hatch went back-to-back with one of the truly great handling sportscars. So, could it cut the mustard in both the handling and practicality stakes, as any good warmed up family hatch should?
Anything stand out...?
Thankfully, it passed the house moving and post-Elise tests with distinction on both counts. Honestly, the Leon might be showing its age a little now (recently resolved in part, however, courtesy of a facelift), but it's still one of the best hatches around in terms of outright driver involvement and space. You'd think, for example, that any hatchback you stepped into after hundreds of miles in something from Hethel would feel a bit soft; a bit wallowy; a bit staid. Not the Leon, though - it still felt grippy, taut, precise, and all the other adjectives car journalists use for a car that's a laugh to drive.
Plus, while it didn't have to swallow any beds or anything like that, as a moving companion its decent boot, high roofline and easy to fold back bench made it well up to the task of swallowing odd-shaped household goods.
On top of that, my better half absolutely loves the thing, which surprised me because I figured its granite-spec damping would have her sick of it within two weeks. Not so.
...and for the wrong reasons?
Sorry about this, but it's that ride thing again. Another long trip south (to Luton, for the launch of the
SEAT Exeo) exposed this particular Leon as possibly one of the worst rep cars ever. As it happens, the Exeo is pretty much a rep's dream car - it proved that SEAT is more than capable of making a car very comfortable on a motorway. This Leon is far from that; there's so little give in the damping that the car bounces over the tiniest tarmac imperfection as though all motorways are actually Roman cobbled pavements.
There's a couple of trim issues too, namely a persistent rattle from the middle vents under acceleration, and an ESP off button that seems to be sinking further into the centre console every week - and it doesn't get pressed that much. Honest.
Where next?
Ikea, probably - you know how it is when you move house: there's no storage problem a Billy bookcase or little Bastant won't solve, is there? I'm also thinking about doing some sort of economy test with it by seeing if I can get the 600-odd miles from my house to a London airport and back again on one tank. That would represent some solid 50mpg economy - a significant increase over the 40-ish it's getting now, and a decent way of breaking the M1 monotony. There's that whole environmental benefit thing, too, of course.
Oh, and there's the chip in the windscreen (there when the Leon was delivered and 'too small' to fix, you may recall), which I'm sure is spreading. So, I'll probably be back to Autoglass too. Hmm.
