Seat Ateca SUV Forum banner

SE-L collection and initial thoughts

7K views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  scodabey 
#1 ·
As asked for elsewhere - for clarity it's a 1.0 manual, bog standard apart from Rhodium Grey metallic. Would have prefered Lava Blue but SE-L is only available in a very limited colour choice.

Picked up car this morning - arrived on the dot at 9.30 Saturday to a pretty deserted dealership with the salesman no-where to be found. He was located and appeared 10 mins later.

Car was covered in the showroom. Might have been better to have dried it before covering it, but never mind. Paying for the car was fine - card went straight through - but they did the 4th & 5th warranty separately and machine was having none of it on daughters card again, so put that on my card. I had expected it to be one amount as I understand it's vital the warranty is on the car before its registered. Was assured it was, and given a print out (which didn't make much sense to me) to 'prove' it. Other than that, no great paperwork hassle, no pressure to buy other stuff etc.

Car had mats in but they claimed the couldn't get mudflaps as current ones don't fit the MY19 cars. That seems unlikely to me, but hey ho. The car has little mini flaps and there a lot of plastic in that area so maybe they're not so important anyway. I noted it's on Bridgestone Turanza tyres - bit of a shame, Bridgestones have stiff sidewalls and don't usually last long. I guess the upside is we can get Michelin Cross-Climates on sooner - assuming they do the size.

First impressions of the SE-L are it looks very smart externally, and internally the leather 'lifts' the interior and it was otherwise not as plasticy as I expected. The rear spoiler sticks out a lot more than I expected. There's a note in the price list that from wk 48 it won't be fitted to 1 litre models - I presume there will still be the smaller spoiler though, but it's not clear.

A pet hate of mine is wonky rear number plates - it's not bad, but it's not level. I wouldn't mind so much but it has a noticeable line on the back that breaks the letters and they've drilled one hole on the line and the other above it. We were introduced to some kind of 'site asst manager' and he asked if any issues, I mentioned the number plate and he looked at me like I was a moron.

Got car out of showroom and was shown features. Wireless charging is fitted and worked which surprised the salesman - he said it's the first time it's worked for him, although he took his phone out of its case as he thought his phone's case may usually block it. Car has folding mirrors. Doesn't have drive select (didn't expect that). I hadn't realised it had park assist - I play with it in our Tiguan now and again, it's pretty pointless mostly, and probably more awkward to use in a manual. Also didn't expect headlamp washers but they're part of the Winter pack fitted to the SE-L as standard. They've been a pain on cars I've had them on as they use loads of washer fluid and no matter what you do they seem to freeze in winter.

Keyless entry will be very handy for daughter, but it seemed a bit random in its operation. She asked if it's possible to lock the key in the car and the salesman said no. What confused me is he was able to lock the car even though the spare key was inside. He said it will unlock again, but it didn't and it wouldn't open by touching the handle (with the 1st key out of range). That uncertainty of operation happened a couple of times while he was showing us the car. Occurs to me it could be key specific - perhaps once opened with one key it ignores the other?

Turns out Atecas don't ship with the sat nav SD Card (some SEAT models do and some don't apparently) and the one for our car hadn't arrived yet. A further issue was Full Link didn't work - it was asking for an activation code. This caused the salesman some alarm and a bit of discussion ensued between him and Service, with Service saying it wasn't standard on the SE-L. He had to phone his boss at home for direction - he looked up the spec and said all Atecas have Full Link. So Service looked at it but couldn't activate it. Eventually it was discoved that SEAT issued a bulletin yesterday that some Atecas and Leons had been mis-built and it hadn't been included. It needs an activation code to be 'installed' by the dealer and SEAT UK are sending those out. Not thrilled by this, as the dealer isn't particularly handy and there's no way daughter can get there during the working week. Salesman's boss told him to take an SD Card out of an Arona so at least the car would have sat-nav.

Anyway, 2.5 hours after arriving, we were finally on our way, daughter driving. No sense of judder from the 3 cyl engine - daughter is someone who likes to keep the revs up and is generally in a gear lower than I'd be, which, to be fair, suits this engine, and the car went up a slip road onto a 70 MPH dual carriageway with no effort at all. From the passenger seat certainly felt more than adequately powerful. As soon as we got going the low fuel warning bonged. Bit annoyed as the dealer told us when ordering that they'd put half a tank of fuel in. At 70 there's quite lot of wind noise from the top of the doors, but otherwise the car was pretty quiet - I'd expected the Bridgestones to produce more road-roar. No rattles.

To my mind the 'sports' leather seats seemed a bit short in squab length - daughter thought they were fine. Lower speed driving around our village was smooth and without any concerns - I was having to persuade daughter not to ram the car into 1st at low speed, it picked up fine in second as long as it was rolling.

One additional comment - this is a small dealership (SEAT Wrexham) and they had quite a number of new unregistered Atecas dotted about. So if anyone wants one quick and is prepared to take 'as is" they might be worth a call. I should say on the positive side the dealer, unprompted, lent daughter a courtesy Arona while she was waiting after her Golf was written off - this has saved us a lot of mucking around juggling cars within the family.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Thanks for the comprehensive round up! Sounds pretty positive but that they haven't quite got to grips with the SEL spec yet. Hopefully these glitches will be ironed out by the time I get mine in December. Am guessing I'll get the same spoiler as you.

The keyless thing is particularly odd and I was keen for this as it is seamless in my i30. Glad my concerns about wireless charging were unfounded. Glad that initial views on the engine are positive. Pretty sure it will be quieter than the i30 which has a lot of wind and road noise.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the update, now I'll definitely be ensuring sat nav and full link works on mine (if they ever build it) as the dealer is 100+ miles away.

You'd hope dealership staff would really be the experts that they purport to be, but we all know better ...I'm glad you got it pretty much working.

I hope your daughter enjoys it!
 
#4 ·
On the subject of the dealer (not) knowing better, one of the things both the sales manager and salesman told us, on two separate occasions, was that the stap/start could be turned off and it would stay off. Sales manager said it'd be reactivated at service, but we just had to turn it off again.

Salesman was pretty gobsmacked when I got him to test that today and of course it didn't stay de-activated on restart.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the story. But your salesman sounds like a complete twat.

Ps. not sure if someone on here is possible to help you, but a guy with VCDS-software can help you with some options. He can turn of the headlight washers and do some other stuff.
 
#6 ·
I'm the world's biggest critic of car sales people but even I wouldn't be that harsh.

It's annoying though that stupid little things enable the dealer to snatch defeat out of the hands of victory. The number plate is annoying me more than anything today. SEAT make all that effort to design and build a car, even putting little plugs into the number plate mounting holes (on our Tiguan the dealer has roughly punched holes in the metal) but the dealer can't drill two holes on a line. A line that very technically renders the number plate illegal.
 
#7 ·
Simples, phone them on Monday and tell them that you want them to produce and fit a new rear number plate.
Cost to them is minimal and can be replaced in seconds by the dealer on a Saturday or at first service or they can post to you to self fit.
 
#9 ·
Warthog said:
Simples, phone them on Monday and tell them that you want them to produce and fit a new rear number plate.
Cost to them is minimal and can be replaced in seconds by the dealer on a Saturday or at first service or they can post to you to self fit.
It's got to go back at some point to have Full Link enabled.

I also have this sort of perfect script in my head about how car collections are going to go and they never live up to it. I need to somehow go with zero expectations.

The snag is that I don't like complaining and the issues are trivial really. The dealer helped a lot in letting us have a courtesy car for 3.5 weeks - not to mention getting us the car so quickly, and at a good price, when I note some people on here have been waiting months.
 
#10 ·
If it bugs you now, it will grow to a real sore so best get it sorted sooner than later.
I will be going over mine with a fine tooth if I ever get mine. Especially as it is a hybrid of My18 and My19 and I have to make sure that it has the exact specification I ordered and was promised.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top