Seat Leon Cupra Review

Leon Cupra

Before last weekend I was asked: "if you were going to have a 'Hot Hatch' which one would it be?" I said without hesitation the Honda Civic Type R.

For me this car has everything I look for in a performance hatchback, it looks to me like a bullet that has been fired out of a gun and is ready to rip apart anything that should get in its way. Ok, so the rear visibility is, in a word, SHOCKING as you have literally no idea what's behind you. It that bad that for instance, if you are the type of person that likes to partake in a little bank robbery of a Wednesday afternoon and had this car as your getaway vehicle, you could have the police an inch off your back bumper with it's the blues flashing and you wouldn't have a clue. This of course would be irrelevant as soon as you got to the twisty tarmac. Whilst you shoot through the corners, hitting each apex at a wonderfully high speed and off in to the distance to lay low in a barn in Southern Spain until "the heat dies down" Mr Plod in his panda car would be in a ditch after trying too hard to keep up.

I love the position of the gearlever along with the driving position, the space in the rear and how easy it is to chuck about but control at the same time, but this means that you have to compromise, which leads me to my only other complaint about this car, the ride! To say that it has a tooth-breakingly hard ride at any speed is an understatement of the highest order! I believe that the suspension is basically made from bricks that have been stolen from the Great Wall of China.

This got me thinking....Is there a 'Hot Hatch' on the market where you don’t have to compromise? Where you can just get in and drive and not have to worry about uncompromising-hard suspension, horrid interior or that costs nearly as much as my last mortgage!?! Then my next demo rolled up in all it's Banana yellow, black wheeled glory:

The Seat Leon Cupra 240ps.

At the time of writing this I'm only 26 years old so not quite due a midlife crisis just yet (I hope not anyway) but I have to say that this colour combination looks simply stunning on this car. I really couldn't wait for the day to end as I had a trip to Porthmadogg in Wales that evening that would give me a chance to really test the car to its limits (and hopefully not past them as there are quite a few cliff drops around the wonderful Snowdonian roads).

We set off down the A50 heading for our destination and my first impressions were of not only how smoothly it drove for a hot hatch! It so smooth in fact, that you don't realise just how quickly you were travelling on wide motorways!

We came off the A5 on to the B4501 which is part of a series of roads on the way to Porthmadogg which I imagined (since it was pitch black) looked like great fun in the cool light of day, but a mixture of tiredness and the gentleman in the A4 3.2 Quattro estate ahead of me nearly dropping off a cliff edge made me think that the test of the car/my ability could wait until the morning after a good nights sleep.

Morning comes! Two of us set out in the Cupra to find a Welsh road capable of testing this challenger to the Type R's 'Hot Hatch' title. We head back the way we came the night before but the traffic was delaying us to much so we decided to take a chance and with the next left turn off the main road, and boy was I glad we did!

The B4410 is an absolute little gem! It is no more than say 7 miles long but the combination of that car and that road is right up there with racing a Rolls Royce Phantom against a CLS 500 and driving a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster back from the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The control that car had on those roads, which were slightly damp, was simply breath taking! The brakes are very sure footed which help make every turn in exquisite for a 5 door hatchback and I was hitting every apex I was aiming for! With 237BHP going through the front wheels, I was expecting the tyres to light up everywhere making it impossible to drive out of a single corner but it was just not the case!

Now the shocking fact about this car! It's basically a Golf GTi! You get more for your money, Better spec, better looking, you get more brake horse power, it's more fun to drive and will cost you £30 a month less for what is essentially the same car, But Better!!

The Cupra went back today and I have to say that it's the first time I have reluctantly handed the keys to the collection driver! I adore this car and it is easily me new 'Hot Hatch King' and I really want it back! Toomey's REALLY need to get a Seat dealership in group......

Thanks for reading

Stuart McKay