The Seat Ateca proves its worth as the perfect people mover

I’m pretty easily pleased really. My husband may beg to differ but I genuinely believe that I’m someone who is quite satisfied with their lot. While I have big ambitions – and I do, don’t get me wrong – I’m generally quite happy with my life. I don’t need the biggest house or the most expensive car or the latest fashion must-haves. I’m quite content with, well, my lot.

However, driving the Seat Ateca has brought something out in me that I didn’t know existed. I now fear that I run the risk of being labelled a bit of a snob, because seemingly overnight I’ve developed a bit of an appetite for the finer things in a car – things that not only didn’t bother me before, I never actually even noticed them.

I don’t know quite what pulled the trigger – perhaps it was the fact that I felt superior driving it. At just 5ft 3¾in (and that three-quarters of an inch matters), I’m on the shorter side of life, so being relatively high up in the Seat makes me feel… well, for want of a better word, authoritative. I loved the feeling of driving around feeling tall and important because in reality, well, I’m not.

Or perhaps it’s the fact that since I started driving new cars for this job there are certain things that niggle me about them. For example, I’ve become slightly weird about cup holders. Yep, I can’t help it, and while many might see this as paling into insignificance when compared against other and more important things, I am really rather picky about them, so the fact that the Seat has perfectly positioned and perfectly sizeable cup holders that don’t just suit my morning Costa but also fit my rather large, diet-encouraging breakfast smoothie flask leaves me very happy – well, I did warn you that I was relatively easily pleased.

Not only does the Seat Ateca provide a very comfortable and smooth ride, its ample size meant it was the perfect vehicle (not that I had much say in the matter) for doing the trip from our sleepy village of Clanfield into bustling Portsmouth to pick up my husband’s friends so they could congregate round ours for the Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor fight (and yes, they all stayed up to the god-awful hours of Sunday morning).

Apparently, according to my husband the Seat was ‘the perfect vehicle to get them all in’ – darn it, I hate it when he’s right. But above all – and this is really important – what really sealed the love affair for me and left me barely able to contain my excitement was when I noticed a circular light puddle reflecting from the mirrors on to the pavement in a subtle yet boastful manner with the word ‘Ateca’ and a little symbol of a car while I was approaching the vehicle and unlocking it one evening. From that moment on, I knew few cars would top this for me. The love affair is real.

All of my above statements and weirdly obsessive comments slightly contradict my earlier comment of being easy to please, but for me it’s the attention to detail, the small and subtle things that make the difference in a big car.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH: The car’s audio system is brilliant (bass is excellent), while the touchscreen and scrolling volume button make changing channels and sound level easy when driving. For me, it’s the small things!

MODEL: Seat Ateca Xcellence
PRICE: £32,720
ENGINE: 2.0-litre diesel
POWER: 187bhp
TORQUE: 400Nm
MAX SPEED: 132mph
0-60MPH: 7.3 seconds
MPG (COMBINED): 53.3mpg
EMISSIONS: 135g/km
MILEAGE (TO DATE): 10,983