Seat Ateca gets a sporty uplift

Many real-world sports utility vehicles aren’t actually all that sporty. Even ones from racier brands like Seat usually pack downsized diesel and petrol engines under their raised SUV bonnets, rather than motors with big-number horsepower figures. To get any semblance of performance, you usually need to spend big.

But it seems you can’t keep the sporty side of Seat hidden for long. It’s now thus here with a 2.0-litre turbo petrol version of its Ateca SUV, complete with 187bhp and a 4Drive four-wheel drive chassis to deliver it. Add in a seven-speed paddleshift gearbox, and 0-62mph in a warmish 7.9 seconds is yours. Not too far off hot hatch territory.

It’s also only offered in FR trim, so gets a suitably sporty bodykit, although perhaps more telling is the fact there are no actual suspension changes – our first hint that a truly focused drive is perhaps not the sole focus of this car. There’s another elephant in the room, too: the 187bhp turbodiesel alternative is actually faster to 62mph than this turbo petrol…

Indeed, it’s only when you really rev the TSI motor that it feels livelier than the diesel. At least it’s smooth, with far fewer vibrations. When you’re cruising, this feels more luxurious, although this is perhaps not quite what we had in mind when testing the sportiest Ateca.

The chassis is more convincing. There’s lots of grip and the variable ratio steering gives it an agile feel, even if it does lack much semblance of feedback. The firmed-up suspension has little roll and there’s loads of traction, making it as agile as many a more conventional hatchback. The price you pay is ride quality, particularly on the optional 19in alloys of our test car: it’s firm and fidgety, and thumps over potholes.

There’s also a price to pay for petrol power at the pumps; officially, Seat quotes 40mpg, but the reality is likely low-30s at best. When we were making full use of the TSI engine, it dropped even lower than that.