One of the cars with the longest personal history I have (which is around seven or eight years) is a 2003 Seat Leon 1.4 S. After I bought it in 2006 with 33,000 miles on the clock, I kept it until 2009, and then sold it to a friend. He kept it three years, and then it was finally sold onto another friend in 2012, and I think it lasted (with well over 100,000 miles on the clock) for another two or three years.
The Mark I Seat Leon was based on the Mark IV Volkswagen Golf, which had the same platform as all these other cars:
-Skoda Octavia Mark 1
-Audi A3 Mark 1
-Seat Toledo Mark 2
-Volkswagen Bora
-Audi TT (yes, really)
It is not surprising, therefore, that there were certain common elements between all of them. My bottom of the range Leon 1.4 S had an engine from the Golf, the dashboard from the Audi A3 and air conditioning controls from the Octavia. It didn't quite handle like an Audi TT, though...
Rather like the car it replaced, a Volkswagen 1.4 Polo, there was a strange mixture of surprisingly poor materials in some places, but general Volkswagen group quality in others. I had numerous problems trying to get the rear wash wipe to co-operate, the lighting for the air conditioning control panel kept being intermittent, and the door pull was extremely cheap and nasty.
Later on in its life, the car acquired various 'battle scars', such as a missing bonnet badge (which was knocked out by a terrified badger), dents in both wings and scratches on the back (it was a little hard to park), and a CD got stuck in the stereo, but overall it did keep on going for quite a long time. The 75 bhp engine was a bit underpowered (bit of a theme going on here), so the car wasn't fast, but she did get around 40 mpg on average, and the fuel range was around 450-500 miles on a tank.
The handling was better than on the Golf, and the interior was tactile and smart (despite one or two poor quality bits of trim). It also looked more stylish than the slightly dumpy Mark VI Golf, especially with the tailgate release button doubling as the Seat badge. I believe that she has now been scrapped, but she certainly gave all three of us good service over a number of years, and you can pick up a decent Mark I Leon now for under £1,000.
