Shattering experiences as the Seat Leon Cupra is plagued with bad luck

“Dave, you’re in the Cupra.” Five (possibly six) words from the chap who manages our fleet of long-term loan cars that cheered me right up in the middle of a busy spell at work recently.

With a weekend trip to London planned and a few other journeys on the cards in the run-up to Christmas, the snazzy-looking Seat would make an ideal companion, I thought to myself as I stuffed the key into my pocket. Happy days.

My first excursion after being allocated the car – popular among our writers because of its sharp styling and great levels of performance and practicality – was an evening trip to one of those out-of-town retail parks for a spot of seasonal shopping.

I’m sure you know the type – it features the usual suspects of Next, Costa, M&S and so on… plus some typical Christmas music to jolly you along as you buy your friends and relatives stuff they neither want nor need.

(Anyway, I digress. I’m looking forward to Christmas as much as the next Grinch.)

Purchases acquired, I returned to the car to find a lengthy hairline crack had appeared along the bottom section of the windscreen. This was most definitely annoying – and there was no apparent explanation.

The following morning meant a few phone calls and a replacement ’screen later that day. A tiny stone flying up from the road would have been the culprit, said Joseph, the chap fitting the new glass, as he showed me the barely visible point of impact.

Little did I realise worse was to come…

Saturday lunchtime arrived and having been granted custody of KU67 TNX for the weekend, I was looking forward to my aforementioned trip to the Smoke.

Approaching the car to make the trip, there was quite a shock. The front passenger window was completely smashed. It was in absolute smithereens, with fragments of glass inside the car and scattered on the road.

Here’s where it gets a bit weird. Naturally, I assumed our poor little Cupra had been targeted by vandals or the subject of an attempted theft… but as I was diligently sweeping up bits of broken glass to prevent fellow road-users getting a puncture, I was approached by one of my neighbours who lives opposite the parking spot I’d chosen the night before.

“It wasn’t vandalism,” she told me in no uncertain terms. “We more or less watched it happen.”

I was intrigued. So what was the explanation? Well, it seems the window had ‘started to crack and craze’ as the sun came up. It seemed a bit unlikely but my neighbour was standing her ground. Well, I thought, there had been a very heavy frost the night before, which would have come under the sudden glare of lots of direct sunlight as dawn broke…

Anyway, more phone calls were in order, the car was transferred to a secure site and covered with tarpaulin to keep out the worst of the wintry weather and it was collected by the AA the following Monday for the necessary repairs to be carried out.

I felt dreadful, even though I wasn’t to blame for either of the two incidents I’ve just described. I’d been in possession of the car for less than a week and already it had found itself in need of two major repairs.

Seat has very kindly told us it will be returned as soon as possible, which is very understanding – and it’s true, we are looking forward to having it back.

After all, it’s a great car that has really carved out a niche for itself in a very busy hot hatch market, where there is a surfeit of models available for around £30,000.

The base price for the Seat Leon Cupra is actually £29,600 (recently reduced by around £500), which is extremely competitive, although with a few extras such as Monsoon Grey metallic paint and black bucket seats, ‘our’ car comes in at £32,025.

It was a real shame it had a week of woe…but it seems like it won’t be too long before we’ll be back behind the wheel (and it also won’t be long before Christmas is behind us!).

By Dave Brown

Model: Seat Leon Cupra 300
Base price: £29,600
Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol
Power: 296bhp
Torque: 380Nm
Max speed: 155mph
0-60mph: 5.5 seconds
MPG (combined): 40.9
Emissions: 158g/km
Mileage (to date): 3,648