The hire firm delivered a Seat. No... not just a seat - four of them in a car made by Seat, or "Say-at" as they say in the trade ("Take a say-at over they-air and I'll be with you in a mo-ment...") It's called Leon... Not sure what model it is...
A Seat Leon in startling colour too - Blimey, I've been standing out like a (the next phrase was abandoned in an attempt to appear at least partially politically correct) First impressions were of trying to get in and realising that once I had sat down the top of my head from mouth upwards was still outside and above roof height... That could say more for the height of the person who delivered it than the car - though I lowered the seat all the way down that it would and moved it backwards and still had to bend backwards to avoid bumping my head getting in. But then I am very tall... 5 foot 4 and a smidgeon... That smidgeon makes all the difference!
Once in and with the seat (that's seet) adjusted to a comfortable driving position, it's actually quite a fun car to drive. The dashboard is unfashionably bare of push buttons but that's a refreshing change really - how many buttons can you play with when you're weaving in and out of traffic in the one-way twists and turns of Britain?The instrument panel and windscreen seem a long way off - the windscreen is at a fairly shallow angle so the bottom of it is miles away and I had problems getting the SatNav sucker attached without it obscuring my view through being halfway up the window.
The instrument panel itself is a bit strange. The speedo goes up to 140mph but only goes round three quarters of the circular dial. That means that the speeds you can legally do in this country - from stand-still up to 70mph - are squashed, squeezed or squozen into a mere third of a circle and you have to wonder why really...
The fuel guage on the left was also obscured by the rather small steering wheel - very sporty, but the fun of posing would be marred if you were to run out of fuel!
I had the 6-gear turbo diesel option and the engine was responsive and nippy. Like many diesel engines it revs quite low and that was useful because I spent ages queueing on the M6 barely getting into second gear and sitting in the same spot for 20 minutes at one point. Reverse was found by pushing the gear lever down and moving left then forwards.
The other usual mystery features: the boot opens just like a Golf, to lampoon the latest VW adverts. Hardly surprising - Seat may be from sunny Spain, but they are part of the VW Group. You push the top of the maker's logo and it swivels inwards so you can grasp the bottom and pull the boot cover upwards.The fuel cap is a back-to-the-basics circular flap with an obvious thumb opening, so no searching the dashboard, door recesses and floor in the dark on this car. There's a (surely old-fashioned?) screw on plastic cap over the tube inside the cover.
Not that I had cause to use it, but I noticed that the back doors had no handle...Instead, it's hidden in the rear edge of the door and there's a recessed opening in the rear quarterlight window for your hand. Don't break that quarterlight then, because I bet that's not a cheap bit of glass!
Most of my day has been on the motorway where it performed well both in fast (well up to 70mph!) and slow traffic. The SatNav reported a low 65 miles per hour though when the speedo assured me I was doing 70 - interesting that the other car I've driven that had the lowest comparable speed (64) was a VW Golf. They obviously consider that the people who drive their cars are going to speed and they take steps to keep them to the speed limit.
From what I've seen though - their drivers all tootle round town with an eye on the speedo - doing 25 miles an hour and slowing down to 20 whenever they see a Gatso camera. Why are Gatso cameras in areas where there are more accidents? Because they cause them...
