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Nargess Shahmanesh-Banks test drives the new Seat Altea
The new Altea is a confident expression of Seat's current brand identity and future design direction? Nargess Shahmanesh-Banks set out to discover if it lives up to expectation.

the Altea is compact enough to be practical around town, but roomy enough to live up to its MSV tag

This is Seat's first car to be wholly developed within the Audi Brand Group, since it was established in 2002. It carries across 90 per cent of its prototype version, the Altea Prototipo, unveiled last year at Frankfurt. Alongside the Salsa, Salsa emoción and Tango, it represents Seat's style evolution that began a few years back.

Visually created by Audi Group's design director, Walter de'Silva, and his team at the technical centre, the car incorporates something called a Dynamic Line, visible from the side that is new to the carmaker and a feature to be seen on all future Seat cars. Incidentally, it was ex-Alfa stylist, de'Silva, who gave Seat the new lease of life -- not to mention the Latino sex appeal -- it enjoys today.

The body is sporty-looking and proportionally compact. The face features a bold radiator grille with chrome surroundings that frames the large 'S' logo. This alongside the eye-shaped double headlamps gives a strong initial visual contact.

As a family car, the Altea needs to be roomy and functional, and it is. It represents a new vehicle concept, the Multi Sports Vehicle (MSV), which means it has to be both functional and sporty. The car is relatively compact from the outside, but reasonably roomy inside. As current trends in this segment dictate, it's a tall car, though the driving position isn't as awkward and unbalanced as in others of similar proportion. Most importantly, in the rear region, the two-tiered floor boot offers over 400 litres of luggage space.

New technology on the Altea include the 2.0 Fsi direct injection petrol engine, the dual-clutch DSG gearbox, the latest generation engine range, a newly designed front suspension and multi-link rear axle, new electro-mechanical power-assisted steering, individual driver and passenger climate control and exclusive to the Altea, wiper blades concealed at rest within in the windscreen A-pillars.

Engine choices in the petrol range include the 2 litre Fsi, Seat's first direct injection petrol engine that delivers punchy performance as well as a 1.6 litre. On the diesel front there is a 2 litre Tdi and a 105ps 1.9 litre Tdi.

The 2 litre Fsi and Tdi are the most powerful engines, and are mated as standard to a six-speed manual gearbox. The Fsi is also available with a six-speed Tiptronic transmission, whereas the six-speed DSG transmission is a desirable option on the 2.0 Tdi. Although the DSG can be considered and indeed driven as a fully automatic gearbox without a clutch pedal, it is actually a combination of two, three-speed gearboxes with two multi-disc clutch mechanisms whose pinions alternate.

Featuring comprehensive active safety, the Altea has ABS, TCS and ESP with a built-in emergency braking system (EBA) and is the first Seat sold in the EU to be equipped as standard with six airbags. There is, additionally, a newly designed chassis, incorporating the agile chassis technology developed at Seat's Martorell technical centre.

"The Altea is a vehicle that combines the traits that characterise the image of all future Seat products," says de'Silva. "It's not about evolution, but a revolution. The Altea will be followed by other models that will confirm this enormous design advance. Our integration in the Audi Brand Group will bring a positive transformation for SEAT." The car will be joined later in the year by the latest Toledo.