I was just about to get into the Leon one morning towards the end of its six months with evo when a bloke in a dented Mégane 225 came blasting up my street, spotted the silvery pseudo Touring car and slammed on his brakes. ‘Oi, mate!’ he shouted. ‘Is that any good?’

‘It’s, erm…’ I began, but then the van driver behind him started getting a bit cross and he ragged off as quickly as he’d arrived. The drive-by Q&A didn’t go well, so for heavy-footed Mégane man and the many other people who seemed to think the Leon looked the nuts, here’s the lowdown.

First up, the tricky question of price. In the spec we had, it’s no giveaway. In fact, 23 grand for a diesel hatch is a bit of a shocker and, although you could probably do without the bi-xenon lights or a ‘convenience pack’ that comes with the inconvenience of typically useless rain-sensing wipers, nearly £2700 of that is for the bodykit and alloys, which you really do need.

Without them the Leon looks plain, meek and uncomfortably close to a cardboard model of an Altea MPV that’s been sat on. In other words, not the sort of thing that’s going to prompt complete strangers to stop short in your street. The good news is that earlier this year SEAT decided to offer the kit for free on certain Leons, and some of them are still kicking around the dealer network, so that’s a substantial saving in return for an even more substantial increase in attention-grabbing handsomeness.

Do make sure you’ve got the £435 sports pack too, because it brings chassis tweaks that make the Leon feel as squat and taut as it looks. The damping is well sorted, it grips hard – apart from on slightly damp roads when the tyres seem to give up – and, unusually for an electrically powered system, the steering has a nice weight to it and none of that weird inconsistency to its assistance. Only a sort of raggedy messiness at the limit really lets the chassis down. But at anything below that, not bad.

What I also liked about the Leon is that it worked really well as an everyday car for the times when you weren’t pretending to be Jason Potato. Terrific driving position, good seats, flawless Bluetooth phone installation, neat iPod dock – all the stuff that makes modern cars user-friendly and relaxing. It felt pretty well made, too, notwithstanding a rattle from the middle of the dash that initially only reared its head when the engine was cold but later became an irksome and near-constant skittering.

So, pretty effective on a functional level, but as a hot-ish hatchback? Well, it’s got the (quite liderally) traffic stopping looks and the well sorted chassis, but there are a couple of flies on the paella. The first is that 138bhp diesel engine. Thick slabs of mid-range torque are very nice for brainless motorway cruising and squirting through gaps in town, but when you fancy having some real playtime the narrow power-band starts to get on your nerves. And unfortunately the same is true of the DSG gearbox. The sad fact is that in its auto setting it’s just not as good as a proper automatic and in DIY mode it’s just not as good as a proper manual. The novelty of double-clutch cleverness soon wears off.

So, yes, the Leon 2.0 TDI is a good, brisk, useable car. But we can’t help thinking it would be even better with a different drivetrain. An engine, say, that ran on petrol and a gearbox that, oooh, I don’t know, maybe had a clutch pedal. And happily evo is expecting a new arrival that addresses both of those problems. Because this Leon is good, but perhaps it could be even better.