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Seat Alhambra 2.0 TDI SE DSG (2012) long-term test review
By
Stephen Worthy
Long Term Tests
13 February 2012 10:52
Big Al proves to be a winter winner - 13 February 2012
While I was standing in the road trying not to knocked over by a bus the other morning – I was trying to juxtapose the 221 to Edgware with my Salsa Red Alhambra, see – I watched my next-door-neighbour-but-one waste 20 minutes of his time.
It had snowed overnight in London NW7. Five centimetres or so, maybe. I watched the neighbour come out and inspect VW van and then head back inside for 10 minutes. Out come TWO saucepans of boiling water which he poured over the windscreen. 'Aaaaargh! Waddya doing man?' I said. Not very loudly. I guess he can afford a new front ’screen when this one cracks. Then, he went back inside and came out with a broom and wiped all the snow off.
Me? I simply started up the Alhambra, reached across to the windscreen wiper stalk, pressed it and watched the night’s deluge clear. It took, perhaps, 1.5 seconds. Despite being Iberian (via Wolfsburg), the Alhambra is finding February’s inclement weather easy-peasy to deal with. The heated front ’screens are a winner, the bum warmers heat up quicker than a halogen ring and the interior is toasty before I’ve left my road. Unlike our Infiniti M long-termer, which eventually became hospitable somewhere near Stevenage on a drive last week. You can hardly drive like a twerp – or indeed want to – in an Alhambra, but even so the fitted winter tyres means there’s been no ice dramas either.
Maybe it’s the weather that’s the cause of the one glitch we’ve encountered on the Alhambra so far. The rear electric passenger door has decided it doesn’t want to close from the inside. Thankfully you can close it three other ways – using the keyfob, central console switch or by manually closing it from the outside.
Yeah, I know. Manually closing it! Tsk. Whatever next? Manual parking rather than the assisted kind? Because yes, the Alhambra does that too.
I’ve gone slushier than the outside lane of the A1(M) over this car.
By Stephen Worthy
Seat Alhambra to the rescue - 27 January 2012
At the last count, the Seat Alhambra has won more glittering prizes than the movie Titanic (seven in the UK alone, but also garnering best MPV nods throughout Europe – including Germany). But thankfully, this is no sinking ship. Far from it. Out there among the Continent’s car-buying public, the new Alhambra is proving to be a fine synthesis of family-sized function, form, real-world practicality and optional electric sliding doors. And that’s why we’re here, speccing up an Alhambra as my wife and I welcome our second child to the world. Is it just a Sharan with a few hundred quid knocked off merely because of the badge?
Sales of the seven-seater Alhambra have trebled in 2011 against the previous 12 months, says Seat, so plenty of motorists have become smitten. Although we want to find out if you can really fall in love with a car as big-boned as this. First, we will have to choose wisely when it comes to marrying standard spec to Seat’s jam-packed option list.
Eschewing the lure of option overkill, where a car groans and puffs under the weight of its own technology, I’ve started with a base of middling SE trim. There are over 50 ‘highlights’ of the standard equipment that SE affords you, including such unmissable delights as rear window wiper and washer and electronic handbrake. Grab you yet? No? How about we dig deeper, as you also get – ‘gratis’ – cruise, Bluetooth, steering wheel phone and audio controls and stop/start.
We’ve grafted all this onto the most popular engine choice, the 138bhp 2.0 TDi Ecomotive (which we’ve opted to take with the DSG gearbox with flappy paddles). How much? £27,875. And then, by jove, we start to get into the really exciting stuff. Okay, so ‘exciting’ and Winter Pack (£295) is pushing it but for that you get heated front seats and heated front washer nozzles. An extra of £450 gives me the standard ish Seat Sound System but with Park Assist to wow the neighbours with.
With our eldest boy now touching one metre tall we’ve taken the plunge on an integrated child seat (£195) and the Cargo Pack (£325) looks a good choice as we think the Alhambra will spend most of its time with us operating on five seats only, with the rear row disengaged to give us a Wembley-sized boot. The Cargo Pack comes with a number of fancy nets and partitions so you can make the very most out of your aft stowage.
We’ve got the car over the depths of the British winter (not that it really has arrived yet in the London area), so £445 seems an appropriate, if a little expensive, use of our budget in order to secure a heated front windscreen. Experience with Volvo XC60 and Vauxhall Meriva long-termers has sold me on the benefits of a full-length panoramic glass roof, both for vision and ad hoc planespotting for kids, big and small. On the Alhambra that means ticking the Panorama Pack which, for its £795, also gives us 17in Kosta alloys… oh, and door and dashboard decorative inserts. Hussar!
Finally the coup de grâce – if my experience with a 170PS Alhambra this summer is anything to go by – is to have plumped for powered tailgate and sliding rear side doors. They are fancy, they are ‘trick’ (as they say in the modified world) but they are unfailingly useful. They make pouring two little boys into a car less of a work of art but something resembling fun instead. And that, for £31,375, is your lot for now.
If this isn’t the start of a beautiful relationship, then I’ll eat my standard spec sun visor (with illuminated vanity mirror).
By Stephen Worthy
