Cupra Leon: Seat’s latest offering is serviceable, but unexciting

I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with the Cupra Leon when it turned up.

You see, to me – and I take a bit of an interest in these matters – the new Leon brand from Seat means performance and outlandish styling. With cars such as the Cupra Formentor SUV – a uniquely Cupra bodystyle not shared with its Seat relatives – that remit is executed with considerable attention to detail and a certain sense of adventure.

That's also true of the all-electric Cupra Born, partly based on the VW ID.3. The first versions of the Seat Leon, ie the Leon Cupras, also held up the performance side of the bargain. Going way back to the days when Cupra was the name for the hotter Seat models, having that badge on the car denoted that it would be like a VW Golf GTI (with which it shared much of its mechanics), but with an extra 20bhp thrown in, as well as some parallel tweaks to suspension, brakes and low-down sort of grumble.

I well remember the Seat Leon Cupra estate I tried a few years ago, which is the most fun I’ve ever had on the South Circular (that’s better than it sounds, by the way). They were fast and cool. The current GTI equivalent versions of the Cupra Leon, loaded up with 310 horsepower plus all-wheel drive on the top estate model, are also very true to the brand values of this innovative marque.

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But not so much the latest entry-level Leon Cupra.

It’s a lot slower than the hot hatch Leons, and while the little additional Cupra touches to the interior trim are very nice – copper highlights here and there – there’s no great sense of occasion when you clamber in.

The saving graces of the Cupra Leon at very much those of the Seat Leon it’s based on – tasteful stacking and cabin treatment, with perfectly acceptable brisk performance, comfortable sports seats, tidy handling; but it’s not much more than that really, and, as far as I can judge, it’s a couple of grand more.

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You do get a reasonable amount of kit for that, of course – even in the lower “V1” trim level – including all the usual driver assistance that we’ve become spoiled by, and some nice 18-inch alloy wheels. It does have a version of the standard VW group touchscreen installed, which is good at some things – clarity, for one – but bad at others, such as trying to set the climate control. My car had the clever VW seven-speed DSG gearbox, but I’ve never been a fan of it – it can be a bit dozy – and the manual option is probably the better (and cheaper) choice on this entry-level model.

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So apart from making the Cupra range of cars a little more accessible – which, to be clear, is certainly no bad thing – I’m not quite sure what this smaller-engined petrol Cupra Leon is really for. It escapes me even in the context of Seat, let alone the VW group’s vast collection of overlapping brands – all the way from Skoda and VW to Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini.

On the other hand, car journalists and marketing types often spend too much time fretting about such things; buyers are often less conscious of “brand values”, and just know what they want. In the end, if someone wants to buy a small, cheapish, Audi A1, or a big expensive Skoda Superb, or a not-very-fast entry-level Cupra Leon, then who am I to argue?