SEAT León Cupra (2009)
by David Finlay (22 October 2009)
In an ever-changing world, it can be reassuring to know that some things remain the same. For example, I've devoted quite a lot of time over the past few years to coming up with ever more abusive ways of criticising the latest high-performance SEAT León, and for all I knew I would continue to do this every time a new version came along for the rest of my life. But now that I've driven the new Cupra I realise that this will have to come to a stop, and the sudden change is very disturbing. I feel like I've lost a child.
At the same time, though, I'm really quite pleased. Some journalists find criticism more interesting than praise, but for me it's the other way round. I would much rather write about why a car is good than why it is bad. And there is no question that the León Cupra, whose predecessors were certainly bad, is now - abruptly, astonishingly - very good indeed.
Somewhere within SEAT there has clearly been a change of policy. Until now, hot Leóns have been given tremendously hard suspension settings which might work if you fitted slick tyres and drove them on a Grand Prix circuit, but which throw them off-line with the traction control in "Don't Panic!" mode on a less than ideally surfaced public highway. The new Ibiza Cupra demonstrated that SEAT had changed its mind and devised a much softer (but adequately damped) chassis which would actually work in the real world. As a result, the Ibiza is a delightful hot hatch, and so too - at last - is the León Cupra.
The ride is still very firm, but that's a result of the low-profile tyres, and it would be a waste of time to contemplate that a UK Cupra buyer might be satisfied with anything else. The springs and dampers are very much more compliant than before, and that helps the ride to some extent, but more importantly it also means that the León can deal with difficult road surfaces in a calm and assured manner. The limiting factor is no longer the quality of the road surface - instead, it's the ability of the front end to deal with the 237bhp of the (unchanged) two-litre petrol turbo engine.
I believe that some of my colleagues are disappointed with the latest Cupra for exactly this reason. Apparently, they think it has now lost a lot of its previous character. When I heard about this I was immediately reminded of the great comic songwriter Tom Lehrer's satiricial comment about the "peculiar hard core" of folk song lovers who "seem to equate authenticity with artistic merit and illiteracy with charm".
I really don't see why their motoring equivalents have a problem, because the "character" of the older hot Leóns was exactly the kind you would want to lose as soon as possible. The Cupra now has the kind of character (efficient and capable but still exciting when required) that a good hot hatch should have.
It isn't perfect, of course. I continue to think that Leóns in general have a big problem with visibility which needs to be addressed, and the Cupra is not the most ideally set-up hot hatch I've ever driven, though it is certainly one of the better ones. In particular the balance isn't quite right: the back end doesn't contribute much, so you have to focus on making the front work, and fast progress through a corner isn't as smooth and delightful as it might be, or as it is in the Ibiza.
Still, the Cupra is now worth much more consideration than it used to be, and most especially it presents a real threat to its close relative, the more expensive and slower Golf GTI. Three years ago I wrote that, despite its one-time claim to be "the Spanish Alfa Romeo", SEAT was at its best when building small, cheap runabouts, and that it "still hasn't got the hang of hot hatches". The Cupra versions of the Ibiza and now the León show that it certainly has now.
Add new comment