Our cars When less is often more
Now that our Cupra Leon is back from the menders we can start to pile on some mileage and see if our favourable initial impressions last the journey.
Pete Tullin
Last month I recounted the sorry tale of how our box-fresh Cupra Leon had been duffed up by some brute in a ratty old Range Rover and how, despite the reprobate’s best efforts to abscond without so much as a by-your-leave, the eagle- eyed ladies of Weybridge were having none of it.
Although I’ve yet to receive any feedback re the outcome of subsequent enquiries by the boys in blue, I’m confident that given the promptness of their response and the seriousness they appeared to attach to this kind of anti-social behaviour, the culprit will have had his collar felt by now. This incident took place around three weeks ago, and while the Leon was at the menders having its nose straightened and its resplendent red metallic paintwork reinstated, the guys at Cupra were kind enough to lend me a 310hp Formentor rocket ship to run around in.
Now as much as I’m a fan of the Formentor, having enjoyed running one for six months, albeit a less powerful plug- in hybrid version, I must admit I wasn’t particularly disappointed to hand the keys back when the Leon returned from its bout of cosmetic surgery.
Now you may be thinking perhaps it’s time to put the old boy out to pasture as he has obviously lost his marbles, given the Formentor has more than twice the power and produces bags more performance than the Leon, but hear me out.
As much as I appreciate the raucous performance and the aural delights of the Formentor’s bellowing exhaust, I also know that when it comes to motors less is often more, and in many cases, the supposedly lesser lights are all the sweeter for it. Granted, we’re not comparing apples with apples here, because despite sharing the same basic platform architecture as well as many mechanical components,
Cupra Leon Hatchback 1.5 eTSI 150 DSG
P11D price £32,285 As tested £33,480 Official consumption 47.9mpg Our average consumption 44.6mpg Mileage 675
Standard equipment: 18in alloy wheels, climate control, sports seats, heated sports steering wheel with shift paddles, LED headlights LED taillights, Digital configurable cockpit, 12in touch screen, 4 USB type C, Sat nav, smartphone integration including Mirror Link, Apple Car Play, Android Auto
Options: Metallic paint £870.
the most formidable Formentor employs a highly-tuned 2.0-litre engine, a sophisticated rear suspension layout and it hurls its power at the road surface via a traction boosting four-wheel drive system. Compare this to the Leon’s which looks like a relative Luddite, sending its modest 150hp output to the blacktop exclusively through the front wheels and soaking up rear-end bumps via a rudimentary axle and it looks like a total miss-match. The thing is though, because the Leon sits lower to the road and is unencumbered by the weight of four-wheel drive gubbins and is blessed with sweetly weighted steering responses and grip levels akin to
a tube of Fixodent, it feels the more alert of the two cars.
The Leon is also a good deal more tractable due to its mild hybrid 48-volt electric motor assistance and precisely calibrated lightly blown turbocharger and high-pressure fuel injection. Consequently, its 1.5-litre motor is hot-to- trot from the get-go, effortlessly zipping onto roulette wheel rush-hour roundabouts and instantly responding with a solid blast of acceleration when asked to merge with swiftly flowing traffic.
Sure the Formentor is ultimately a good deal faster, always providing you can find the type of roads where you can exploit its hammer blow brio but at the same time its bigger turbocharger takes a fair bit of winding up, so even when given a sadistic right boot vital milliseconds are lost waiting for all that power to be manufactured and then unleased and consequently it can often feel quite laggy, leaving you somewhat exposed when encountering the type of choked traffic conditions where the Leon really excels. The Formentor will also leave your wallet feeling pretty exposed. On a recent 650-mile, predominately motorway trip to Newcastle and back the Formentor
set about gobbling unleaded at a rate of between 30 and 35mpg. Although I’ve yet to tackle a similarly extended jaunt in the Leon, my varied toing and froings have seen the digital readout averaging high forties mpg, therefore I’d be astonished if the Leon didn’t better the Formentor’s returns by a good 10mpg.
I’ll whisper my last point this month very quietly because somehow the blow to the Leon’s nose seems to have coincided with a distinct improvement in the attitude of its infotainment system. Of course, it’s still a pain to machete a path through its jungle of menus but touch wood it has worked pretty flawlessly since its return, performing every requested function without quibble. It even appears to have learned to interpret Geordie into English when I use the dictation function to reply to text messages while I’m driving. Of course, you can pretty much guarantee I’ve just jinxed matters now that I’ve mentioned it. I’ll keep you posted.
Why we’re running it
To see how the eTSI version of the Cupra Leon works for our fleet.
WEBSITE Please visit
www.businesscar.co.uk/tests/long-term-test/ for previous reports on our fleet
www.businesscar.co.uk | May 2023 | 45
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53
