SEAT Leon Cupra

Our Leon gets its first service, but we'll have to wait to sort the wayward dash light

By Ian Eveleigh

February 2008

It was at 10,600 miles when the Leon finally pinged a chastising ‘Service now!’ message at me, but as I’d been keeping a close eye on the service countdown warnings, I’d already got the car booked in for a service a couple of days later.

In this age where service intervals can often approach double that mileage, there’s something strangely comforting about getting a service done so soon. Maybe I’m just being old fashioned and a bit sceptical, but I can’t help wondering if the extra-long service intervals favoured by other manufacturers are better for marketing purposes than for the cars themselves, especially when it comes to hard-working performance models.

Taking the SEAT for a service would also mean the intermittent appearance of its emissions warning light could be investigated. It’s been popping on and off for a few weeks now (with no obvious change in the car’s behaviour) and thankfully it had been glowing away for a couple of days when I dropped the Cupra off at Motorvogue SEAT in Northampton and drove away in a diesel Altea XL courtesy car.

Returning at the end of the day, I was pleased to see my car ready, waiting and – always welcome in this grubby winter weather – washed. The service had come to a not inconsiderable £169.04, of which £60 was for ‘long-life’ oil, something I’d previously thought was only needed by models expected to travel much further between services. Cars like Catchpole’s old Golf GTI long-termer, for example, which, for the purpose of comparison, had its first service more than 5000 miles later, and for £15 less. And there you were thinking SEATs were the more affordable alternatives to Volkswagens…

As for the warning light, Motorvogue’s verdict was that KR07 has a faulty ECU that needs to be replaced, so they’ve put in an order for one and will endeavour to fit it to my car as soon as it arrives. Fingers crossed it’ll be fine after that. I’ll let you know next month. In the meantime I’ll just have to put up with the light being on from time to time, but as my suspicion that the Leon is in otherwise fine fettle has now been confirmed, I certainly won’t be letting it spoil my enjoyment of the Cupra.

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Our Leon gets its first service, but we'll have to wait to sort the wayward dash light

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