A Seat Leon Cupra, seen on a car market in China in 2018. The Cupra was in great shaped and looked fantastic in silver with black trim and darkened headlight visors. The black trim theme was applied all over the car, from grille to window frame to the tiny faux air inlets under the grille.
Seat is a Spanish brand owned by the Volkswagen Group. The Leon is a hatchback compact car made since 1999. The car we have here is a second generation Leon, made from 2002 until 2012. The Mk2 Leon was based on the same platform as the Volkswagen Golf Mk5. The Leon Cupra was a sporty version of the Leon, comparable to the Golf GTI.
Design of the second generation Seat Leon was very pretty, a streamlined body with a strong crease over the side and a hidden rear-door handle.
The Seat Leon was sold as in import in China, which made it expensive compared to its locally made competitors. And sales were slow anyway as almost nobody in China knew the Seat brand. There were plans to produce Seat cars locally but nothing came of that.
There is a very odd difference between the Euro-spec Leon Cupra and the China-spec Leon Cupra. The Euro-spec car was powered by a 2.0 turbo with 241 hp and 300 Nm. However, the China-spec Leon Cupra had a 2.0 turbo with only 211 hp and 280 Nm. This engine was used by Seat in Europe as well, but for the less powerful Leon FR model.
I haven’t been able to find out why this was. It probably had to do with service. The 211 hp 2.0 turbo was widely used by Volkswagen China, in imported cars but also for locally produced Volkswagens, so servicing this engine was easy. The 241 hp 2.0 turbo however, wasn’t used in any Volkswagen in China at the time. So I suspect that’s why they went for the 211 hp engine.
If so, it makes some sense, but it isn’t really fair, as Seat was basically cheating their buyers. Volkswagen did a similar cheat with the China-made Polo GTI, which had a lesser engine than the Euro-spec car. But that was a China-made car, whereas the Leon Cupra was an import. I’ll try to find out more about this matter.
The interior is as gray as a rainy day but the leather seats look great.
The Leon Cupra, or the FR if you want, had a six-speed DCT gearbox sending horses to the front wheels. Seat made the gear lever look like a manual, with the rounded knob. But that is fake too. Seat China claimed a 233 km/h top speed and a 0-100 in 7.1 seconds. Price in 2012 was 294.600 yuan.
Even though sales were slow the Seat brand had a cult following in China, and I’ve seen many heavily modified Seats on tuning shows and track days. Sadly, that was not enough to save the brand and in 2016 Volkswagen pulled the plug and cancelled Seat in China. In 2018 there was some talk of Seat returning as an electric brand but in the end that didn’t happen.
Well, perhaps they shouldn’t have cheated.
Still a great looker, but it got only 211 horses under that sexy bonnet.