Walkaround Review of 2017 Leon Facelift Is 30 Minutes Long

This isn't the usual Autogefuhl reviewer, but maybe Thomas was busy with the Skoda Kodiaq at that moment. Regardless, it looks like we have a Spanish driver in a Spanish car on Spanish roads.

About half of this review is dedicated to walking you around the car. But SEAT hasn't done that much to the Leon. There's a slightly wider grille, tweaked headlights and fog lights at the front. Meanwhile, the side only boasts some revised alloys and the back has trim and taillight graphics.

The pre-facelift, Leon was said to be not SEAT enough, a little bit dull in the steering wheel department. But the engineers didn't fix that. Instead, they gave it more sound insulation for a premium feel. To be honest, all recent compacts have lost feel, including the Ford Focus when it got electric power steering during the facelift.

The bit that interests us in this review is the cabin. We're looking at the 3-door Leon FR with most of the bells and whistles. The facelift does indeed add the same ambient lighting as in the Ateca. New chrome trim surrounds the center console while the manual handbrake has been replaced by a toggle.

While the infotainment screen has been upgraded to an 8-inch one, it's not perfect, for example, pinching the screen to zoom into or out of the navigation map requires you to press hard. It's those kinds of things that make us wonder why VW is short-changing its SEAT brand.

Not much is happening under the hood. In fact, this particular tester is fitted with a 1.8 TSI and 7-speed DSG, both of which have been available since 2013. SEAT says it's added a new 115 horsepower diesel engine and switched the 2.0 TDI to a DSG7 wet clutch unit. But those are relatively small things.