FIRST DRIVE: Brian Byrne finds the new Seat Leon was well worth the wait
It may be that the top folks at Wolfsburg thought it made more sense to get their new Golf on the road first rather than the small cousin Seat's new generation Leon. Or maybe they were afraid the Spanish car was too good.
Whatever the reasons, the Leon launch was delayed although it was ready to run at the same time as the Golf, and Seat siblings Altea and Toledo. And because the new Leon is the last release in the current set of new generation cars conceived under the direction of Walter de'Silva at Seat's Martorell design centre in Spain, its impact will likely be less than it might have been.
Steve Lewis, design manager at Seat and the man directly responsible for the exterior style of the Leon and its sister cars, says the Leon is the one he and his team had wanted to get on the road first.
"This is the natural progression from the original Salsa showcar," he told The Irish Times at the European press launch of the Leon. "This is the dream that we designers had in the beginning, it's the one where the most heart is, and the one that most of our heart has gone into."
But it was a marketing decision to run with the Altea first, because it was set in the compact MPV segment that was seen at the time to be growing faster, with big players like Ford producing their C-MAX to pitch against the Renault Scenic and Citroën's Picasso. And subsequently they put a bustle of a boot on the Altea and called it Toledo, a decision which is still recalled in controversy.
"At the design end of things it seemed a bit funny at the time," Lewis says. "But I was told to do it as quickly as possible and using as many components from the Altea as possible. It was very difficult from a design point of view to make a good-looking car with a boot from an already tall car - and it was another hatchback, anyway."
Lewis says that they had looked at the Leon as a basis for a car with "a proper boot", and though it would still have been difficult to get the proportions right, it could have worked. "Personally, I think we made a mistake by putting the Toledo name on that car. I think if we hadn't, perhaps it wouldn't have been so controversial.
"A lot of people have a certain vision of the Toledo model, and for them it was a shock."
In Irish terms it seems not to have caused a major problem. With 297 Toledos sold to the end of May, the nameplate is up 37 per cent on the older model for the same period last year.
And the 298 Alteas sold here in the same period is a whole new market for the importers.
So they're quite happy, even if the sales of the smaller Ibiza are down, pending a freshening of the current model and a whole new car in about three years.
It's likely the new Leon will work too, if for no other reason than it's probably the best-looking of the three cars that came from the Salsa concept.
The Leon is lower, sleeker and shorter than the Altea and the Toledo. It shares the wheelbase and, against the current model, it has more headroom front and rear and more rear legroom, as well as a more efficient boot capacity.
A five-door car with a clever concealed opening mechanism in the rear doors, it has quite coupé lines.
Inside it's similar to the Altea/Toledo, with the good and bad - a decent style of instrumentation but low location of the main information screen in the centre stack.
When it comes to Ireland at the end of September, it will have a similar engine range to the Altea - 1.6- and 2-litre petrol with 102hp and 150hp and a brace of diesels with 1.9- and 2-litre units providing 105hp and 140hp respectively. A new 185hp 2-litre petrol, labelled TFSI, will also be available and a 1.4-litre petrol option will arrive next February on the Irish market.
Higher performance versions with FR and Cupra designations will be along in a year or so. Starting prices in Ireland are expected to be around €19,500.
Some experience this week with the 1.6 and the 1.9 diesel did indeed show the new Leon to be the "driver's car" the makers aimed for. Crisp and taut in the twists, good controls, and fairly perky engines. The 1.6 petrol needs to be worked, though, and although it has a pleasing enough sound at high revs, it could get a bit tiresome.
By far the best powertrain balance is the least powerful of the diesels, which has very good low-end punch and a really great deep-throated sound when revved.
Steve Lewis is happy his Leon is now out on the trot. But his attention is really elsewhere just now, on the new Ibiza.
"I'm excited," he says. "It's our main project at the moment, and I think it will leapfrog ahead of the other equivalent cars in our group when it's launched."
He's not considering any in-group potholes at this stage.