Seat Leon review

There’s more than enough space for a couple of tall adults in the front, with particularly good head and leg room on offer. Plus, there are plenty of cubbyholes for assorted clutter, including an armrest with a storage compartment on all but the entry-level edition, a pair of cupholders between the seats, a decent-sized glovebox and front door bins.

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The addition of an electric parking brake on all but S trim frees up an extra cubbyhole between the front seats. We also like the optional wireless phone charging system, which holds your mobile in place no matter how hard you drive.

Despite the thick pillars behind the back doors, the back of the Leon still feels relatively airy. There’s even space for three – but if that’s three adults, it becomes a squeeze. Two tall adults will feel comfortable, though, with more head and leg room than a Ford Focus offers, but the Leon is still not at spacious as a Skoda Octavia.

Rear-seat passengers don’t get lots of storage space, but there are useful door bins that are big enough for a reasonably large drinks bottle.

The Leon is a conventional family car so, unlike MPVs and SUVs, doesn’t try to do anything especially clever with its seating configuration. The rear seatbacks fold down in a 60/40 split to extend boot space, but that’s your lot.

If you follow our advice of avoiding the entry-level S trim and stepping up to at least SE Technology, then you’ll be rewarded with passenger seat-height adjustment as standard. FR Technology models and above get the added bonus of passenger lumbar adjustment.

With the rear seats in place, boot capacity is a decent – if not outstanding – 380 litres. In real-world terms, that’s enough for the weekly shopping, but you might want to double-check whether your buggy will fit, particularly if it’s one of the larger ones. The boot lip is pretty high, too, so it requires some effort to heave anything heavy inside.

All but the standard S trim has the option of a useful dual-height boot floor; it’s part of the Storage Package, which isn’t expensive, so we’d go for it. In the upper position, it creates a separate storage area beneath and smooths out the step left when you’ve folded the rear seats down. These lay almost flat.