Friday 25th April 2014

SEAT Leon Cupra 280 competition video

This should explain why we couldn't reveal too much initially...

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You may remember PH recently ran a competition for a preview experience of the SEAT Leon Cupra 280 before the Geneva show. There was very little we could give away at the time, which this video can now make clear.

It wasn't just a poke around the cabin and a peer under the bonnet, as may have been expected. Without wishing to reveal to spoil the surprise (again!), it really was a passenger experience unlike anything else. There were two Leons, a helicopter, a dockyard setting and some swearing from the competition winners. And handbrake turns, of course. What's a good car video without a handbrake turn?

So what was purported to be a simulator experience turned out to be rather a lot more. Thanks to SEAT for getting PHers involved! Furthermore, SEAT has also published the full Cupra 'ring record lap. Turns out the car is definitely a manual after all and 7:58 looks very fast indeed.

See the simulator video here.

 

[Hitch78]

Very clever. Great fun.

[va1o]

Still don't see why the height restriction was necessary?

[Penneth]

va1o said:

Still don't see why the height restriction was necessary?

Back seat of a hatchback with a helmet on, doesn't leave much room!

[Dafuq]

OMFG, that fkin rocked, 1000 street creds to Seat.

I'm sold.

[abbotsmike]

Penneth said:

Back seat of a hatchback with a helmet on, doesn't leave much room!

With monitors and cameras fitted, presumably cutting space down further! The two guys in the film are from the seatcupra forums, there's an article over there with their comments on the day.

Quite impressive how well it goes even when 4 up and with a load of filming and recording equipment on board. The suspension is sat really rather low in some shots!

[SevenR]

Nothing short of Brilliant.

[Mr Tidy]

I was lucky enough to win a place by entering the competition from PH!
The simulator (actually the car) was mighty impressive, but I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed it more in a standard one by looking out of the windows!
Maybe hanging around at a hotel for 3 hours with nothing laid on to pass the time before being taken to the venue made me a bit grumpy - after all I had only driven 80 miles to get there, the guy sat next to me had come over 200 miles for the experience which lasted just a few minutes!
Still it was a memorable experience.

[Matthew Clarke]

LOL Genius

Sounds a bit of a shame about the lack of hospitality though

Did you not get a go in the car after then?

[ManOpener]

Absolutely barmy. Just watching that had me grinning like a loon.

[Antj]

The major Irony,,,,,,,,, most SEATs come in through those docks in Sheppey and that's exactly how they are driven around them by the porters ....lol

[QuattroDave]

Mr Tidy said:

I was lucky enough to win a place by entering the competition from PH!
The simulator (actually the car) was mighty impressive, but I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed it more in a standard one by looking out of the windows!
Maybe hanging around at a hotel for 3 hours with nothing laid on to pass the time before being taken to the venue made me a bit grumpy - after all I had only driven 80 miles to get there, the guy sat next to me had come over 200 miles for the experience which lasted just a few minutes!
Still it was a memorable experience.

Some might say quit yer b&*chin as you were lucky enough to win and try it out, but if they really didn't 'handle' the winners very well before or after then that's a bit of a faux pas on the marketing side. Especially if they then didn't give you the chance to be a passenger in the red car for the next run? Wouldn't that have made sense!?

Christ even Vauxhall set up a cracking spread on their VXR days. Granted you pay for time on track but even off track they've always got plenty for you to do eat and drink!

[Charge99]

Mr Tidy said:

I was lucky enough to win a place by entering the competition from PH!
The simulator (actually the car) was mighty impressive, but I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed it more in a standard one by looking out of the windows!
Maybe hanging around at a hotel for 3 hours with nothing laid on to pass the time before being taken to the venue made me a bit grumpy - after all I had only driven 80 miles to get there, the guy sat next to me had come over 200 miles for the experience which lasted just a few minutes!
Still it was a memorable experience.

Same here, for me it was a 10 hour day for 10mins in the back of a car, with a wait time 4 hours after the planned start in a grotty hotel. If they'd given me a proper drive on a track I might have bought one, but on the road it's just not exciting enough.

Also, can you imagine if the car had crashed!!! I don't mind being a passenger in a track car, but only if I know what I'm letting myself in for.

[pppppppppppppppp]

I was another winner. I even signed up to PH after being a lurker for a couple of years and even then I didn't expect to get on the list, so I was surprised.

Head room was very limited. I am 6' on the dot and it was quite a squeeze getting in the back. I was on the first run and even though I was kept hanging around for an hour or two it wasn't anywhere near as bad as some others were subjected to. They let us hang around afterwards and I had a good chat with the SEAT UK folk who were all keen to talk about the event and the cars, and the two drivers, who were also keen to chat.

It was fun being in the back of the car and my suspicions that it was a real car were raised on the first handbrake turn, which is probably why I'm not in the final vid. It would have been more fun to be able to look out of the windows though.

Unfortunately for SEAT I bought a Golf R at the weekend. OK, so it's still VAG but that's not the point really, is it?

[den]

Excellent :-)

now they need to make the Cupra stand out from the crowd in the looks department.

[tim milne]

I'm going to be the lone dissenting voice on here, but — participants aside — what are we supposed to get from this film?

A ride in a Leon Cupra is as good as a simulator? Surely, that says more about simulators than it does about Leon Cupras.

Have simulators now become the benchmark for exhilaration or, as I suspect, the kids in the ad agency who dreamed this up, are more into gaming than they're into cars.

[Mr Tidy]

No, we didn't get a go in the cars, and as I was on the last run of the day there was not much opportunity to chat for long as they were all busy packing up.
The post above summed up my feelings pretty well; if you could rig up a chair to tilt and dive in time with the live video you could have done the same at home in front of your PC!