Hi all,
I had been looking for a consummate all-rounder for a few months since selling my Mustang GT and having to retire off my venerable Subaru Outback. Ideally I was trying to combine performance and practicality.
Had originally looked at E63 AMG Mercs and Audi S6 Avants, but the sort of money I wanted to pay would have meant an out of warranty car - not to mention running costs and potentially crippling bills should something 'big' go wrong.
So a few days ago I started to look at the likes of Golf R, Skoda VRS and the Seat Cupra - all in estate guise.
Golf is competent, but dull as dishwater, I like to Skoda brand, but just couldn't bring myself to own one and then there's the Seat. I've always been a closet fan of the brand. Spicier than others in the VAG stable and the styling and build has really upped it's game in the last few years (Audi's come out of the same Barcelona factory after all). So some Autotradering began....
Fortunately, there's a dealership 3 miles away from me and better (or worse depending on a cost point of view!) it just so happened that they had a Leon ST Cupra 300 Carbon edition in stock... A quick test drive later and an hour or two musing got me thinking seriously about it. It's by no means cheap (if you'd have asked me a couple of years ago whether I'd spend almost £30k on a Seat I'd have thought you deranged), but the initial depreciation hit had been taken by the previous owner (Seat I believe) and the 'one of 50' cachet as well as the carbon trim, wheels, Brembo's, seats, digi dash and, of course, almost 300 brake to play with was a compelling proposition. So back to the dealer I went an hour or so later and a deal was struck
Will be picking the car up next weekend (once fully prepped) and looking forward to seeing if it lives up to my expectations as a 'Swiss army knife' of cars for me
Always good to be part of an online community, so looking forward to sharing here.
Thanks also to Syphon for the YouTube review of the car ( https://www.seatcupra.net/index.php/2018/08/23/seat-leon-cupra-st-carbon-edition-video-review/ ) - this also helped galvanise my decision
I had been looking for a consummate all-rounder for a few months since selling my Mustang GT and having to retire off my venerable Subaru Outback. Ideally I was trying to combine performance and practicality.
Had originally looked at E63 AMG Mercs and Audi S6 Avants, but the sort of money I wanted to pay would have meant an out of warranty car - not to mention running costs and potentially crippling bills should something 'big' go wrong.
So a few days ago I started to look at the likes of Golf R, Skoda VRS and the Seat Cupra - all in estate guise.
Golf is competent, but dull as dishwater, I like to Skoda brand, but just couldn't bring myself to own one and then there's the Seat. I've always been a closet fan of the brand. Spicier than others in the VAG stable and the styling and build has really upped it's game in the last few years (Audi's come out of the same Barcelona factory after all). So some Autotradering began....
Fortunately, there's a dealership 3 miles away from me and better (or worse depending on a cost point of view!) it just so happened that they had a Leon ST Cupra 300 Carbon edition in stock... A quick test drive later and an hour or two musing got me thinking seriously about it. It's by no means cheap (if you'd have asked me a couple of years ago whether I'd spend almost £30k on a Seat I'd have thought you deranged), but the initial depreciation hit had been taken by the previous owner (Seat I believe) and the 'one of 50' cachet as well as the carbon trim, wheels, Brembo's, seats, digi dash and, of course, almost 300 brake to play with was a compelling proposition. So back to the dealer I went an hour or so later and a deal was struck
Will be picking the car up next weekend (once fully prepped) and looking forward to seeing if it lives up to my expectations as a 'Swiss army knife' of cars for me
Always good to be part of an online community, so looking forward to sharing here.
Thanks also to Syphon for the YouTube review of the car ( https://www.seatcupra.net/index.php/2018/08/23/seat-leon-cupra-st-carbon-edition-video-review/ ) - this also helped galvanise my decision
