SEAT Leon Hatchback (2013 - 2020) FR Technology 2.0 TDI 184PS 5d Owner Review

The car has been great to me over my 18 months and 35000 miles of ownership. I commute around 100 miles to work and it’s been reliable and surprisingly economical, returning anywhere between 55mpg-66mpg on average. And that’s without exactly driving economically or having a steady right foot. However on the odd occasion when I have decided to take it a bit steadier and stay with the majority of traffic on the road I have seen 70mpg on a few occasions! And those are the type of numbers much slower cars would be struggling to achieve on the combined. The car has a strong torquey engine with plenty of mid range punch for quick overtaking and motorway performance, although having to change gear at just over 4K rpm does take a bit of enjoyment away from the driving experience and I do sometimes wish I had a petrol engine to rev out a bit more, that is until I’m getting around 600 miles on a tank sometimes and suddenly my wallet agrees with the idea of a diesel. I’ve also ran the car with a dtuk tuning box and had it on a rolling road pulling out 228bhp and 450nm so it by no means a slow car and will now stick with a mk7 golf gti and a mk3 focus st in a straight line. It does a great job at getting rid of ep3 and fn2 type R’s and seeing the look on the faces of GTD owners and 320ds when you go past them is pretty good. The mid range acceleration feels like a cupra and with the economy of the 1.6tdi it is massively appealing. I do not need a different car but it’s the closest I could get to running a cupra without the massive fuel bill