2025 Cupra Leon Estate Review: A Superb All-Rounder In A Class Of One

Put a car journalist in a fast estate, and there’s a good chance they’ll be happy. Never mind that the vast majority of people these days have decreed that they want their practical performance cars tall and SUV-shaped, our nerdish little corner of publishing will always find an M5 Touring cooler than an XM. (Actually, that’s a bad example. Travelling everywhere on a spacehopper is cooler than driving an XM.)

This brings us on to the Cupra Leon Estate, driven here with the punchiest powertrain available, a 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder sending 328bhp and 310lb ft to all four wheels via a seven-speed DSG gearbox. It can juggle the way it distributes that shove between the wheels via its torque splitter system too, which also allows this, a small estate car, to have an in-built drift mode. Oh yes. 

It’s an identical setup to one you’ll find in several other places in the VW Group – the Golf R, Audi S3, and, most relevantly here, the Cupra Formentor. (Weirdly, you won’t find it in the Leon hatch – VAG politics intended to stop it stepping on the Golf and S3’s toes, perhaps?)

Our collective SUV obsession means the vast majority of people looking to team this powertrain with lots of matte paint, copper accents and explaining to their neighbours what a Cupra is will opt for the Formentor. Rule number 127 of the Car Journo Code (a definitely real document) says it’s my duty to implore people to get one of these instead. Question is, should I?

Yes. Yes, I should. First things first, this powertrain is as viciously effective here as in everything else it’s stuck in. VW’s had a couple of decades to hone the EA888 mill to turbo four-pot perfection, and it feels pretty close in this latest iteration. Turbolag is nearly completely gone, and it has deep, broad reserves of shove ready to go, no matter where in the rev range you are. 

It’s a very technical engine, and not a particularly sexy or emotive one, but my word, it’s effective at getting you where you need to be very, very quickly. That’s helped out by the pin-sharp changes and smoothness of the DSG ’box, which serves up the usual occasional irritations – hanging on to gears too long or taking a second to wake up in auto mode – but is otherwise pretty hard to fault. Some bigger, less plasticky paddles would be very welcome, though.

The official numbers say this car will hit 62mph in 4.8 seconds and top out at 155mph, and in acceleration terms at least, there’s very little reason to doubt them. Those figures are absolutely identical to the Formentor with the same powertrain, by the way. 

But the Leon is lower than the Formentor, and any GCSE physics student will tell you that’s better for keeping weight in check (unless they’re very bad at physics and should have picked a different GCSE).

That helps what was already impressive handling in its loftier cousin feel that tiny bit sweeter. You can tuck the nose into a corner, the active torque distribution helping silence the merest suggestion of understeer, resulting in a feeling of the entire car pivoting around you. Even though it’s based on a platform that was always designed to be front-biased, you could almost trick yourself into thinking it’s a rear-wheel drive car. Almost.

It’s not perfect in the handling department, though. Like with the powertrain, there’s a certain clinicality to it. The steering is nicely weighted and accurate, and the brakes are strong and responsive, but both of these areas just lack the last little level of granular feedback you’d want. That’s by no means a dealbreaker, though, and the combination of brutally effective handling and effortless powertrain comes together to turn the Leon into a formidable cross-country tool, a real baby RS6.

That’s further aided by the way it rides. With the excellent Dynamic Chassis Control adaptive damping system fitted to all Leons with this powertrain, it’s compliant and composed over gnarly tarmac, but never uncomfortable and thuddy around town or on a long motorway run. When you are taking things a bit easier, it’ll happily crack 30mpg too.

It’s nice inside, too. We’ve covered this latest generation of hot Leon’s interior in more detail in our review of the hatch, but in short, the Sabelt bucket seats you get as standard on these spicier variants remain some of the best fitted to any car nowadays, and it’s full of pleasant materials, assuming you can get on board with Cupra’s trademark grey ‘n’ copper aesthetic. We’ve tried this latest iteration of VW’s HMI system in lots of cars, too, and while some haptic irritations remain, it’s a lot better than it was a few years ago.

And while the latest Golf R, unlike lesser Golfs, retains the pre-facelift model’s nasty touch-sensitive steering wheel controls, you get proper physical buttons in the Leon. This, together with the slightly posher surroundings, we think is reason enough to spend the £47,570 minimum that gets you into a Leon Estate with this powertrain – a little over £1500 more than a Golf R Estate would have cost. (That said, this top-spec VZ3 starts at a punchier £53,470.)

We say ‘would have cost’ because, as we write this, the Golf Estate, including the R, has been quietly dropped from UK order books (for now at least), leaving the Leon in a bit of a class of one. All the other petrol-powered performance estates left are bigger, gutsier and a lot more expensive. Perhaps a better point of comparison comes with the equivalently powered Formentor, which kicks off at £48,605.

Opt for the Leon instead, and you’re not only saving yourself over a grand, but you’re getting more practicality (620 litres of bootspace is a full 200 more than you get in the equivalent Formentor) and it's a bit sweeter to drive. We may as well be screaming down a well for all the difference this’ll make to people’s buying habits, but why exactly wouldn’t you? It’s still not exactly cheap, but when you consider its sheer range of talents, it starts to look like pretty decent value. No matter how much they risk being steamrolled by fast SUVs, the Leon is evidence that a hot estate will almost always do things better.

The stats (Leon Estate VZ3 2.0 TSI)

• Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder, petrol
• Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic
• Power (bhp): 328
• Torque (lb ft): 310
• 0-62mph: 4.8 seconds
• Top speed: 155mph
• Weight: 1651kg
• Starting price: £53,470