Car Review: Seat Tarraco enters the crowded SUV market

A brand brought back from the brink continues its steady course with the help of the VW mark of competence, Sean O’Grady says

This is a full-size SUV, with optional five and seven seaters, and very much a VW group product (Photos Seat)

A few years back Seat was a car brand in a pretty sorry state: neglected, in fact. VW bought the brand back in 1986 and hadn’t really been sure what to do with it. It tried the passion thing, and had a stab at making it into the “Spanish Alfa”.

Then there was a tilt at turning the Seat into another value brand like in-house VW group rival Skoda. None of the stratagems worked out that well. And then they just gave up. Crucially, Seat didn’t have any products to offer in the fastest-growing sector of the market – SUVs – and the range was getting old. There were dark rumours about VW finding the financial burden too much to bear. There was bleakness, and a whiff of decay.

Then they gave Seat a chance and the team in Barcelona started to design some fine products – sparky little SUVs such as the Ateca and Arona, plus ever madder, faster, more virile versions of the Leon and Leon estate, their Golf-based family hatch contender. Lately they’ve even, quietly, launched a new premium brand, Cupra. There’s an electric city car based on the current Mii, plus an even bigger radically styled Cupra SUV coupe (the Tarascan) on the way.

(Seat)

The results have been heartening, with a sales revival, a better, more successful image, and a new purpose in life. It’s been a product-led rather than a sloganeering, marketing-led revival, which makes it all the more sustainable. Seat just started making more cars people want, without self-consciously attempting to define some arbitrary identity or brand values for a firm that once assembled Fiats and was never, in truth, an especially innovative marque.

The cars still speak for themselves, but now more convincingly, with an authentic accent. It’s how the modern VW group survived, and mostly prospered, after the Beetle. It works.

The spec

Seat Tarraco XCellence Lux 2.0 4Drive

Price: £36,820 (as tested, range starts at £27,750) 
Engine capacity: 2.0 diesel, 4-cyl, 7-sp Auto (DSG)
Power output (PS @ rpm): 190@4,200-6,000
Top speed (mph): 131
0-60mph (seconds): 8
Fuel economy (mpg): 29.7
CO2 emissions (g/km): 166 

It’s good to see the latest step on the revival – the Seat Tarraco. This is a full-size SUV, indeed an optional five and seven seater, and very much a VW group product, with controls, engines, gearboxes and much else shared with the Volkswagen Touran and the Skoda Kodiaq.

So much of it is a VW group product made at the famous Wolfsburg works in Germany, home of VW since before the war.

If you prised the badges off the Tarraco it would pass easily as any of its siblings, and that’s no bad thing. It has that solid feel, ease of use and impression of quality that customers love, and has allowed VW to get past all that distasteful unpleasantness and stay very much in business. I’m not sure what it tells us about consumer power forcing environmental action, but that’s another column. I wonder if Caroline Lucas or the Greta Thunberg family run for a family car?

(Seat)

Talking of which, for now there’s no battery electric or hybrid versions of this Seat, though you can order a plug-in hybrid next year. The smaller petrol engine option is a bit too feeble to cope with this hefty bit of kit.

The diesels, leaving politics aside, are far better, and you should go for the more powerful version with the automatic gearbox. Unless you’re a hill farmer, you don’t need four-wheel drive, obviously, and certainly not with the absurdly big alloy wheels and thin tyres.

These, together with the Seat’s near lines, bold grille and sharp creases down the flanks give it an Audi vibe: typical VW group again, and the theme continues in the cabin.

(Seat)

There’s a very sober, tasteful interior with plenty of space. I especially liked the big colour graphics for the dials on the dash, and the big comfy leather seats. The air con coped well with our recent heatwave, I can report.

The third row of seats fold out of the boot floor, and are suitable only for small children – there’s literally no leg room for the over-5s.

With these auxillary little seats up, there’s very little boot space left, the usual story in these sorts of car, as it happens, so don’t be deceived that you can carry seven humans and all their chattels – there are trade-offs.

My only gripe in day-to-day usage was that the cruise control is still located on a little pod to the back of the steering wheel, rather than in the wheel itself, which is a bit old-fashioned and fiddly these days.

(Seat)

My four-wheel drive press car went well, with surprisingly rapid acceleration and safe and predictable handling, just as you would want in a family car. It managed to haul itself onto the odd curb too, but the massive alloy wheels and thin tyres rule out proper off-roading, which does make you ask yourself if these SUvs are anything more than mere fashion accessories (they ain’t).

(Seat)

The new car market is so crowded and competitive, in even this niche sub-sector of seven-seater SUVs the buyer has plenty of choice – the capable Nissan X-Trail, the civilised Peugeot 5008, odd-looking Honda CR-V and value Kia Sorento, to name just a few. Alternatively, you could probably do almost as well for rather less with the almost-forgotten Seat Alhambra, a full seven-seater MPV (ie seven adults). It’s an old design now, a relic of the MPV boom that gave us the Renault Espace and Citroen Picasso, if you remember those carefree pre-SUV obsessed days. The Alhambra is not a big seller, and hardly state-of-the-art, but that probably means bargains if you go online and do a bit of research. Apart from the blistering performance Leons, Seat doesn’t exactly add to the gaiety of nations, but they do make decent, competent cars and I’m glad they’re still around.