Cupra Leon Estate

REPORT 3

£40,535 OTR/£42,305 as tested/£644pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

To expose “sports crossovers” as the silly idea they are.

DRIVER

Paul Horrell

I HAD ANOTHER CUPRA ONCE. WHEN CUPRA WAS MORE A TRIM LEVEL than a brand. It was a Seat Ibiza Cupra Bocanegra. Bocanegra being a bit more than a paint package but a bit less than a trim level. It had the VW Group’s 1.4-litre twincharged engine, with a turbo and a supercharger for 180bhp. It also had a 7spd DCT.

I didn’t much like that powertrain. The car was the same size and power as the Golf VR6 I’d had back in the mid-Nineties, and the big six in the VW was just as responsive as the little forced-induction four, barely less economical, and sounded far better. Also, the Ibiza’s dry clutch DCT transmission was unpredictable and snatchy at low speed. It remains so in the Group’s new small cars today.

This new Cupra’s engine is a 2.0-litre, with a turbo but no supercharger, and a stout 310bhp. It sounds nicer than that 1.4. It’s a 7spd DCT transmission again, but this one has oil-bath clutches rather than dry ones, and works much more smoothly. It’s also 4WD, so there’s less unbecoming wet-road scrabbling of the front tyres.

The Ibiza coincided with the arrival of our child. Most people round my parish use that life event as an excuse to buy some kind of Range Rover, or at the very least a Qashqai. Odd when you think about it: a baby is smaller than a bag of groceries. But our baby got taller, like they do, and now she likes the fact the Leon has a lot of rear legroom. I mean, a lot. More than a Golf, because the wheelbase is longer. Part of the job description of a 13-year-old is to injure a leg in a trampolining accident, and so lately we’ve been driving round with the front passenger seat set forward, enabling her to keep said leg straight and elevated as advised by the casualty department. No chance of that in the old Ibiza.