Cupra Leon Estate VZ1 - long-term review

A few days in yet another generic mid-sized Crossover rapidly increased my love for the Leon. In fact, it made me wonder if many buyers have forgotten what it’s like to drive a normal, non-faux offroader. I was agog at how much lighter it felt. How agile. How easy it was to thread the Cupra down narrow streets between parked cars and the immediacy and accuracy of every control.

And this after just a few days in Crossover mediocrity. Imagine if you migrated from, say, a Golf to a Qashqai back in ‘08 and have owned a succession of similar cars since… The Leon would feel like a Ferrari 296 GTB, only with back seats and a decent boot. Maybe we need to launch some sort of Top Gear campaign to integrate the population back into cars that aren’t pretending to be rugged ‘urban’ vehicles. Surely one test drive is all it would take.

Of course, the reality is that the Cupra isn’t quite on par with Maranello’s finest in a dynamic sense. Yet the appeal is deep and there’s such a fantastic blend of practicality and performance. It’s a shame people don’t seem to realise. Nobody seems to know this car exists! You’d think a handsome estate car with 328bhp would at least be a sort of underground hero. But even pretty knowledgeable people often ask me what it is and are shocked at the specs. I guess that makes it a proper old-fashioned Q-car? I like it more all the time.

Here's some more stuff we've discovered:

The Cupra offers a huge breadth of suspension adjustment beyond just pre-programmed modes

There's a slight sense that everything is a bit too styled rather than designed. Cup holders don’t actually hold two cups in tandem, for example

The start/stop programming feels unrefined and takes an age to right itself if it shuts down just as you roll to a stop and then the lights turn green instantly

The boot is huge, and there's loads of rear seat space. It's a proper functional car that happens to have 328bhp and a clever rear torque vectoring rear differential