Seat Ateca Reminds Us VW Saves Its Best Designs For Europe

8 years, 9 months ago - 3 March 2016, Autoblog

Anyone else find it strange that Skoda and Seat, Volkswagen's two car brands that aren't sold in the United States, are almost always better looking than their VW-badged brethren? Take the new Seat Ateca, which just debuted in Geneva.

Like many vehicles the Volkswagen Group sells, it rides on the company's MQB architecture, meaning it's related to the Golf. But it's like the very handsome lovechild of that car and the Audi Q3. It serves in a similar size class, too – it's barely an inch shorter than the Q3, and it gets comparable choice of powertrains.

Being a small, Euro-market CUV, the Ateca gets a two gas engines and three diesels. The base petrol powerplant is a 1.0-liter, three-cylinder turbo with 113 horsepower while a 1.4-liter, turbo four with 147 hp is the top-end gas engine. Diesel selections consist of either a 1.6 or 2.0-liter TDI engine, with three different power levels – the 1.6-liter is fixed at 113 hp, but the 2.0-liter can be had with either 147 or 187 hp. Front-drive is standard, but all-wheel drive is also available.

We've got a good look at the new Seat Ateca, which, it should go without saying, will never be sold in the United States, in the gallery up top. Hope that when Volkswagen sells a sub-compact CUV in America it looks half as good as this does.