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This is our new Ateca Experience Lux picked up yesterday at EuroSeat Crawley (thanks Matthew for the service!). 4 hours drive there and a nice 4 drive hours back to Chester running it in (no more than 2-2,500 revs).
Overall impressions: Disappointed! 🙁
I thought having had a Karoq with all the toys and extra options for 3 years that i was going to get exactly the same but with even more toys…Wrong! Yes, they do come from the same factory in Czechia and in essence it’s 90% the same car but the 10% difference makes all the difference…. See below my own opinion and yes, I’ve only had it 24 hours and driven it once:
THE GOOD: As I knew from the Karoq, the 1.5TSI engine with the DSG box is perfect for us, the right amount of power and you get exactly the same MPG figures as advertised (38-42,pg with mixed driving). Suspension is tighter and goes round the corners better but it compromises on comfort slightly with the big 19″ wheels and like Mark’s gorgeous Tarraco I’ll check the tyre pressure today as the dealers tend to overinflate. New Technology is great and I love the digital cockpit, the wireless charging for my phone and 360″ camera which i didn’t have on my Karoq (2018 model, maybe they are standard now).
THE BAD: The car really feels cheap on the inside, not so much the forward view (dashboard and further down) but the doors are just plain black plasticky with a bit of leather, no metallic inserts, accents nothing. The Skoda was a level up in terms of build quality in th einterior! I should have checked the spec before we ordered but having had the Karoq and doing the configuration on the SEAT website (plus watching the Ateca video from Seat with the 3 Spanish Seat engineers – very misleading!) I assumed that the car came with electric diver seat, heated steering wheel and the Beats speakers clearly shown on the Seat website configuration, NO, None of that! Manual seat adjustment and very basic sound system ( I can live without the heated st.wheel). Also the hands gesture control of the main screen is hit and miss (the Karoq’s was 100% solid) but the Voice Control “Hola Hola” works well…
Also the boot has a large lip which we knew about when we first saw it at the dealer’s and the rear seats don’t slide but hopefully we will get used to it all with my wife’s wheelchair and won’t be scratching the bumper.
AND NOW THE UGLY: The Lane Assist system is faulty, to be fair I had the same problem on the Karoq after 12 months and they replaced the radar and sensors but when it happens on day 1 with 6 miles on the clock of a brand new car it’s SOOOO disappointing! So now I have the inconvenience of taking to the local garage (a bit awkward as I didn’t buy the car from them but from a garage closer to France than Chester as they gave us £250 off the AP) and wait for the part to arrive and then if I remember well from the Karoq, it takes 1 full day to fit and test. I forgot to say what’s wrong with it. The system is on but it doesn’t read the road markings correctly and only activates once you’re in the next or (god forbid!) opposite lane. I really like the system and normally have it on all the time, hence I was gutted.
Overall, I hope the car grows on us as we need to live with it for 3 years now, it costs us £2,500 with the optional sunroof which was a grand itself. In hindsight, we should have gone with the Tiguan R-Line which did work out around £5,500 with all the bits we like to have but then you have 36 long months to live with it, we would stretch to the extra £3k to spend with it. I’ll provide further updates in the coming weeks and months…
Happy motoring to all!
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The trouble with a great many car video reviews is they are a press launch day and normally abroad, so you are seeing Europe based models. These are not what we get with the UK spec. Take my Tarraco FR Sport for example. All left hand drive vehicles come with dynamic chassis control, Beats audio system, heated bucket sport seats, and quite a few other techy bits, not included or an option on UK models. In Europe they only offer the FR which comes with a lot of options. In the UK we get the choice of FR, and FR Sport with only sunroof and spare tyre as the only options.
Like others have said, research is the key, I even go on other countries configurator’s to see what’s different.
Reading through the post , very interesting. Reference the Kuga , I have had two in the last six year . Diesel and petrol Titanium X. The petrol being the far superior drive . Tested the new Kuga and Ateca on the same day and without doubt the Ateca was the better car .
will just have to wait and see how I get on with it long term!
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