Seat Leon Estate review

The Leon Estate’s 620-litre boot isn’t quite as big as the Octavia’s, but only by a few litres, though you do lose 150 litres in the PHEV. Either way this is still a massively practical car that ought to swallow pretty much anything a small family might throw at it, from bulky pushchairs to the weekly shop, without complaint. It’s at least as commodious as all those crossovers you’ve been looking at, maybe more so.

There’s loads of space for passengers, too, not just their things. Adults are fine in the back, and up front the seats are supportive and well set, so it’s easy to find a comfortable driving position. In autos the gear lever is replaced by a little switch you flick backwards or forwards with your thumb, adding to the feeling of space.

This all sounds a bit too positive…

The dashboard is the controversial bit. Because the Leon is based on the same platform as the Golf and Octavia, it shares their basic dashboard architecture (the Audi A3, which also uses this platform, does its own thing).

That means few buttons: the Leon’s dashboard has none whatsoever, with just the door lock, auto hold, parking brake and engine start button down on the centre console.

That means everything including the drive modes (Cupras get a little toggle on the steering wheel for that) and climate controls are managed through the screen (which now measures 10.4 or 12.9in), though these are at least permanently displayed in a row down the bottom.

And as touched on already, you can set shortcuts to the like of the ADAS settings too. It’s undoubtedly an improvement on before, but the menu structure is still at times confusing and some key functions remain hidden in sub-menus or behind one too many prods of the screen. Seat is hardly the only culprit, of course.

But otherwise?

We’re big fans. It gets proper steering wheel buttons, behind which sits a 10.25in customisable digital binnacle display, which gets a fairly traditional look with a rev counter on the left and speedometer on the right. Meanwhile you can toggle the middle area to show satnav, trip info and various other things.

And if you’re coming from the likes of an Ibiza, Arona or Ateca, it feels a big step up. Those cars get a different cabin and infotainment setup, though you do get a lot more physical switchgear (including proper climate controls). So it’s swings and roundabouts.