Well - personally - I bought mine because it was cracking good value for money at the time and driven against it's rivals it was the better choice for me. Is there any other way to choose one car over another? The Golf was a bit dull in MKIV mode by comparison and quite a few K more than the Leon all said and done. The only half decent fast focus came later in the form of the RS (which wasn't all that anyway). This time things are somewhat different - the pricing is closer (more than some of it's rivals and just shy of the Golf) and there's more to choose from (or so it seems to me) in that there's a ST, GTI, VXR and Megane in the mix. Choice is a good thing - it'll be fun doing all that test driving
Im chilled
Perhaps i'm just too old for schoolyard spats - and why on earth bother doing that?
Pathetic.Perhaps it's just that I spend too much time driving in my "sensible" car and not enough hooning around in the Leon lol.
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One thing I'm disappointed by is that the day I walked in to the SEAT garage and saw that black 53 plate 225 LCR is was just blown away - I had to have one of those. For some reason I just don't get that with any of that sensation now with the new crop of hatches. I'm in no way excited about getting an S3 as its a compromise for the RS4 that I want and can never afford.
Its not that I'd never had a decent car or even been 'car aware', but in black sat in the showroom with Recaro's and SatNav that first LCR gave me a feeling of REALLY wanting something. OK so it was a step away from my Lupo GTi, but that wasn't a bad car. That lust that made me walk out of the showroom thinking "I've gotta have that car at any cost" just hasn't grabbed me of late and its gutting as the states on the prices just keep getting higher.
10 years ago you could have given me a 10 yr old hack with a 1.8 8v engine, no power steering and a 5 speed box and I'd have been happy as larry. Where did it all go wrong...
So the new cars handle a bit better than the old ones, but they're all much of a muchness now. I'd fallen out of love with the Golf in 1993 when the Mk3 was launched. Other than the R32, the MK4 did little to rekindle my passion for them, so to be honest the LCR/LC was a monumental step forward considering it was based on the Mk4 Golf base. It mad me realise that somewhere someone in the VAG group still had a pulse and wanted to make cars for people who wanted to drive for the sake of driving (rather than getting from A - B).
The new Leon Cupra has some nice touches (esp. the engine and seats), and given it is cheaper than a Mk5 GTi by 900 quid at base price, but also 20% more powerful, more tunable, and probably better standard base spec then it would be hard to pass it off. I looked at the Mk5 at launch and it ended up at £23.5k by the time I'd specced it to a very modest standard, and I could have easily hit £25k without effort.
Its not that I'd never had a decent car or even been 'car aware', but in black sat in the showroom with Recaro's and SatNav that first LCR gave me a feeling of REALLY wanting something. OK so it was a step away from my Lupo GTi, but that wasn't a bad car. That lust that made me walk out of the showroom thinking "I've gotta have that car at any cost" just hasn't grabbed me of late and its gutting as the states on the prices just keep getting higher.
10 years ago you could have given me a 10 yr old hack with a 1.8 8v engine, no power steering and a 5 speed box and I'd have been happy as larry. Where did it all go wrong...
So the new cars handle a bit better than the old ones, but they're all much of a muchness now. I'd fallen out of love with the Golf in 1993 when the Mk3 was launched. Other than the R32, the MK4 did little to rekindle my passion for them, so to be honest the LCR/LC was a monumental step forward considering it was based on the Mk4 Golf base. It mad me realise that somewhere someone in the VAG group still had a pulse and wanted to make cars for people who wanted to drive for the sake of driving (rather than getting from A - B).
The new Leon Cupra has some nice touches (esp. the engine and seats), and given it is cheaper than a Mk5 GTi by 900 quid at base price, but also 20% more powerful, more tunable, and probably better standard base spec then it would be hard to pass it off. I looked at the Mk5 at launch and it ended up at £23.5k by the time I'd specced it to a very modest standard, and I could have easily hit £25k without effort.
Very fair comment, I think there may be 
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