Which car is faster - the one with 400hp or the one with half that and great visibility? If you drive an older, less powerful car, one built before the days of tree-trunk width A-pillars and elephantine wing mirrors, you'll know the answer of course.
Faster point to point, nowt to do with the turbo
Both of these blights on modern cars are, partly of course, a legislative necessity since regulation put greater emphasis on protection during a crash than avoiding having it in the first place. The other factor is our own vanity and the fashion for ever 'sleeker' windowlines resulting in many modern cars having less glass area than your average armoured vehicle. Meaning we then need to load them up with bleeping 'assist' systems to make up for the fact we
can't see out of them
anymore. And, yes, I've woken up in something of a curmudgeonly mood.
For pedestrians and those on two wheels - pedal or engine powered - these trends are deeply worrying. Raked back A-pillars with huge wing mirrors at their intersection with the door create junction blindspots that could hide a bus, let alone a cyclist or motorbike. Doubly worrying on the SUVs among the worst offenders.
More exploitable because you can see out of it
But it's also a pain for the keen driver, those all-important sight lines through corners you depend on when driving 'at pace' commonly blocked on many modern cars. I was struck by this in particular driving the
Clio 200 and Fiesta ST
, both of whom have tall scuttles, thick pillars and 'quarterlight' style front windows that severely restrict vision at anything other than the straight ahead. Which ruins your flow along the kind of twisty B-road a hot hatch should excel on.
It's one of the reasons I think classic Imprezas made such great British backroad cars. The low bonnet, upright windscreen and thin pillars made them wonderfully easy to place on the road and, speaking as former owner, were as big a part in its cross country pace as the turbocharged boxer engine and four-wheel drive. See also older 911s, the McLaren 12C, new Minis, Caterhams (and their ilk) and most of the Elise/Exige family. You can have all the power in the world but if you can't see out of the thing or have confidence in its position on the road it's completely wasted, which is probably why I felt distinctly nervy driving the Jaguar F-Type for the first time.
Another reason we're up for the Cupra
So, why the shout to SEAT in the introduction to this rant? Well, ahead of getting in the very
exciting sounding Leon Cupra
we've had its more modest FR brother in this week in an attempt to get back up to speed with the car. There's much to like about it (more in due course) but the thing that struck me first was how great the visibility is. The pillars are commendably slim and by mounting the mirrors on the door the Leon combines the neat trick of being stylistically distinctive but also opens up that crucial corner of the side window so commonly obscured in many other modern cars.
That, to me, is proper design and one highlighted in the press release for the amazing looking Toyota FT-1 concept, which has A-pillars specifically shaped to improve visibility through corners. Like the SEAT's mirrors, if it looks good AND has a functional benefit someone's done their job right.
Now that's out of the way once we come to drive the Cupra we can stick to more PH-worthy observations like the 280hp power output, adjustable dampers and active locking diff. And the ability to see where you're going when you use them to the full. Which will be nice.