I got a chance to drive Seat Leon, both automatic and manual. It was nice car, with big trunk. I like big trunks, where I can open my big travel bag and maybe have some extra space to take out and organize clothes, tools and bottles of wine (last time I had 3 bottles of wine, 1 egg liquor and 2 beer cans – lot of strategic packing)
Seat Leon
Managed to get it to 200km/h, and quite fast. But it didn’t feel so nice in that speed. It was not so comfortable above 160km/h. Interesting function is that when speed gets higher, music got louder. I didn’t even notice it until I had to break hard, and then realized that music was too loud.
One of features that I liked is possibility to go back to cruse control and configured speed with simple action on a bar. This was convenient when standing in front of traffic light. When it would get green I could just pull bar/stick and it would accelerate to 50km/h. But this worked only when it was car with automatic drive.
Seat Leon front
Interior
I really like automatic cars. As a not so good driver it frees me from gear shifts and excessive fuel consumption, or slow acceleration. One of my colleagues expressed concern what to do with right hand, and how to fight habit to keep it on stick. I suggested 2 solutions, buying car that doesn’t have conventional stick, where this control is placed behind wheel, or like some kind of dial or something else. Second solution is to keep box with snacks or sweets on passenger seat and keep hand there.
Magical bar/stick
Sometimes during driving it showed on screen message “2-cylinder mode”. Google says that experts call it “Variable displacement”. It is an automobile engine technology that allows the engine displacement to change, usually by deactivating cylinders, for improved fuel economy. The technology is primarily used in large, multi-cylinder engines. I have no idea how big engine was in this car, but it was a big car. It’s impossible to tell if it actually helped, because I was driving it 200-300km only.
2-cylinder mode
Another car, another blog post and another experience. Well, I thing this was 4th or 5th time that I got this kind to drive, now I finally got some time to put it here. With its distance keeping, anti collision detectors, back camera and tons of other electronics it was nice experience.