• Sports seats are very supportive
• Driving position is excellent
• Firm suspension – but it’s supposed to be!

How is the quality and the layout?

Good. Cupra has aspirations of becoming a premium brand, and it did a good job of turning the Leon into a premium product. Everything you touch feels quality – the wheel is trimmed in perforated leather, the dashboard is clad in soft-touch plastic, the seats are stitched together well and the stalks feel substantial.

It’s easy to get comfortable behind the wheel, too. There’s a lot of adjustment in the steering column and the seats, and there’s loads of room for your feet under the dash. The lack of any physical controls on the dashboard is a bit of a bugbear, though, as we will now explain.

Infotainment and technology

The Cupra Leon’s infotainment system really lets the side down – but to be fair to Cupra, it isn’t really its fault. The touchscreen for the Leon was lifted from its Volkswagen Golf sister car, which is a very poor place to start where infotainment systems are concerned.

The screen is a nuisance to use because all of the functions (climate controls, sat-nav, drive mode settings for the engine – the lot) are buried in sub-menus. There aren’t any physical hotkeys to quickly jump to the function you want, either. You’re forced to use the touchscreen menu instead, which is slow to respond and not particularly precise to your inputs.

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The Cupra Leon also is quite a firm car (which it’s supposed to be – it’s a hot hatchback after all), meaning you can’t poke the touchscreen with the same sort of accuracy as you can in the standard SEAT Leon. So you’ll constantly be missing the widget you were aiming for and hitting a different one as the car moves around under you. It’s very frustrating.

Comfort

Much like the SEAT Leon on which it’s based, the Cupra Leon is a nice place to be. The sporty bucket seats are even more comfortable than the chairs in the SEAT-branded variant, primarily because they support your lower back and legs better.

There’s a bit of road rumble from the rubber-band tyres around the 19-inch alloys on the VZ2 and VZ3 models, but refinement levels are perfectly acceptable otherwise. When you’re tootling along at normal speeds, the engine is hushed and wind noise is well suppressed. There’s also enough room in the back for a six-foot passenger to sit behind a six-foot driver.

It’s a sporty car, so the suspension is firm – but it’s never harsh. Even with the optional adaptive dampers set to their most aggressive ‘Cupra’ mode, the Leon never thrashes you around in your seat. Comfort levels are dialled up further with the VZ1 variant, as it comes with passive dampers and smaller 18-inch alloys.