Seat Leon Cupra: car review | Martin Love

Seat's seriously quick Leon Cupra can do 155mph on the road, so what's it doing in a muddy field in Wiltshire?

Price: 28,380
Top speed: 155mph
0-62mph: 5.8 seconds
CO2: 149g/km
MPG: 43.5

This is the most powerful road-going Seat ever built. It's the embodiment of the Spanish carmaker's 20-year quest to create a usable family saloon that goes like the absolute clappers; a car that's as easy to use as a pair of slippers one minute, as resolute as a sprinter's spikes the next. It has a gurgling turbocharged petrol engine that generates 290bhp (that's a lot) and whips you to a top speed of 155mph, slamming you to 62mph in just under 6 seconds. It's a car for which adjectives like "blistering", "balls-out" and "hooning" were created. So why am I stuck axle-deep in a muddy field in Wiltshire's Chalke Valley? Top speed about 2mph"