With two-way steering wheel adjustment, the Leon’s driving position should cater for most drivers. The Cupra gets two fantastic bucket-style cloth seats that provide excellent lateral support. Rear-seat passengers won’t be such enthusiastic fans, though, the buckets’ plastic backs making an uncomfortable place for knees to rest.
This aside, passenger and luggage space matches the class average, although it marginally trails the Golf in most dimensions. A general gripe is the sober cabin, due in part to the high window line, but also to the choice of shades of grey for just about every surface.
Cupra come with tinted rear windows, polished black pillars, 18-inch alloys, black door mirror casings, different bodywork front and rear and a one-piece oval exhaust. But it lacks the ‘straight from the track’ look of the previous Cupra R.
The Cupra certainly has the raw ingredients, chief among them a sensational engine and impressive dry-weather grip, yet the result isn’t everything we’d hoped for. With Seat billed as the sporting brand in the VW group’s brand hierarchy, we hoped the Cupra would be a purer, more focused take on the Golf GTi.
With its extra power and more outright grip, the Cupra would be the faster car on a dry circuit, yet for real-world driving the experience is just a shade too remote, and the attention to detail disappointing. That said, priced at £19,545 and well equipped, with bi-xenon headlights, ESP, dual-zone climate control, electric windows and iPod connectivity, the Cupra still makes a strong case, especially given its potent performance and decent economy (we averaged 26.7mpg, which is impressive for a hot hatch).
The Cupra is strong enough to fend off the Astra VXR and Mazda 3 MPS, but it won’t tempt us from the similarly priced and still more appealing Focus ST or Mégane R26.
