Getting the best performance from your Seat Leon.

"Leon by name Lion by nature"

The Leon was released in 2000 and was constructed by the VAG group. One of the first major releases to be produced under the watchfull eye of VAG and certainly an impressive release. Combining the Latin flair of Seat with the build quality of Volkswagen.

The Leon can be considered a fun rival to the golf sharing the range of engines from the 1.4 up to a heavily tweaked 1.8l 20 valve Turbo. The Seat Leon is available in a variety of bright fun colours with red and yellow remaining the popular choices. Performance wise the model to go for has to be the Leon Cupra, which was first released with 210bhp and this later increased to a heady 225bhp, leaving both the A3 and golf looking a bit power shy.

The obvious engine choice is the 1.8T and this can stand phenomenal tuning without major internal modifications. A larger turbo along with an intercooler upgraded Dump valve and remap could produce power gains of up to 300 BHP.

Because of the popularity of this engine there are a number of VAG specialists springing up with a standard tuning packages which can be applied.

The standard performance and handling is a very good although many owners will lower their car 30 millimetres and fit slightly stiffer springs to help eliminate body roll.

 Larger wheels will look nicer but can really hamper the handling so stick with 16 or 17's and use low profile tyres to retain the cars original roatational diamater.

From a performance point of view we should not ignore the diesel range which included the 1.9 TDi which produces 110 BHP. With a relatively cheap remap you can see power levels of 160 BHP and still retain much of the fuel economy of the standard model. (The power gains on the 2.0 and 2.5 diesel engines are even better!)

Feel free to browse our tuning articles and if you require any more detail on the modifications we have recommended use our forum to ask a model specific questions. You will also meet other enthusiastic seat tuners and be able to swap tips and ideas with them.