NosherN – Like you, I haven’t ruled out extending our current lease. I wouldn’t want to keep it 2 years more, but the advantage of extending is that you aren’t tied to it so as soon as something decent that you like comes on the scheme you can order straight away. Of all the cars on the shortlist, the X1 is the one that I most like the look of and from a drivers perspective I am sure that it would be the best by some margin. My wife doesn’t like it but I’m now the sole driver. My comments were based on having owned loads of BMW’s (3, 5 and 7 series) over the years and when we were looking in 2018 I was driving a 5 Series at the time and the quality of the X1 cabin was miles behind my 5 series. Another issue that we had was that the seats were far too small, but I believe that they have improved them a bit since. I think that the sport seats might be too firm for my sciatica though. I don’t really want to have to add loads of optional extras, but the X1 doesn’t have a lot of things that I would now miss. My heart says the X1 but my head says keep other options open.
Intranicity – You make some really good points. I think you are probably right about the smaller engines. My daughter has a Ford Focus with a 1.0 engine and it’s a peach. Having not had anything less than a 2.0 litre for decades I think I just need to get with the times! I did look at Skoda and Seat on paper (my checklist ?) but I found it strange that even though they are both supposed to be budget brands from within the VW stable, they both miss features that are standard in the Tiguan. With Skoda I’d have to add a load of options at cost and with Seat you can’t even add as options features that are missing. On the basis that I also prefer the look of the Tiguan (both inside and out) over the Skoda and Seat equivalents I discounted them both.
Roll on Q2 where my choices will either be narrowed down (if one or two are removed) or improved if something better is added!