Seat Arona review

It wasn’t that long ago that the Seat Arona was just a twinkle in the Spanish brand’s eye. In fact, until Seat's bigger family SUV, the Ateca, hit the road, Seat had as much experience of building SUVs as Ferrari did mobility scooters. The Ateca was a fine first effort, though. It won a major gong at that year’s What Car? Car of the Year awards, and, not content to rest on its laurels, the Arona arrived a short while later.

Named after a small municipality in Tenerife (Seat has a long-standing tradition of naming its cars after places in its native Spain and its territories), the Arona is based on the Seat Ibiza (a small hatchback), which makes it a small SUV of roughly the same size as the Ford Puma and Volkswagen T-Cross, but a little shorter than the Skoda Kamiq.

It's a bit pricier than some of those peers, but it's still cheaper than the premium models in the class, which include the Audi Q2, Mini Countryman and Volkswagen T-Roc. The good news is that, being from the Volkswagen Group stable, the Arona shares a lot with the T-Roc and Q2 beneath the surface, including a similar range of pokey petrol and diesel engines.

But how does the Seat Arona stack up against those and other key rivals? And which engine and trim level make the most sense? Read on over the next few pages and we'll tell you all you need to know. 

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