SEAT ALTEA 1.6 S 5dr (2009)

Seat Altea - an MPV without the bad bits.

I decided I wanted an MPV, just to keep up with the other school-run mums to be honest, and I shopped around A LOT and the Seat Altea is what I ended up with. Well, I say ‘ended up with’, this is what I fell in love with is more accurate. It’s everything you want in an MPV but without the carbon footprint, oversized masculinity, sluggishness and brutal ugliness.

I had a Land Rover once and that was before the days of everyone having a giant car: people were always giving me nasty looks as if I was clogging up the road in some massive eighteen-wheeler or something. You don’t get that feeling in the Seat Altea – although it has all the size of a big people carrier or something, it feels, and sort of looks like a normal car. I’m not the smallest girl about (you try having three kids with a curryhouse twenty yards down the road) and I fit very comfortably in along with all the family. But when I look at it. It doesn’t look like something you could disapprove of.

And nor should you disapprove of it – the mpg averages at something like fifty and the engine has a real punch to it. It can easily handle busy motorways without barging the rest of the traffic out of the way. And the 60,000 mile warranty is a nice bonus, too! A stylish but sensible MPV.