I must confess myself to being excited when the keys to our Seat Leon long termer fell my way last month.

Much has been said over the past 10 months about how the Leon combines a sporty appearance with best in class fuel economy. So I was eager to find out how good the fuel economy really was.

We are very unlikely to hit the official combined cycle mpg published by the manufacturer, because the test is carried out in laboratory conditions. Our Leon Ecomotive has some impressive figures to its name, including 74.3 combined mpg and emissions of only 99g/km being the most impressive.

On a 200-plus mile route of combined rural, town and motorway roads, I managed a good 64.7mpg, showing that the ecomotive technology is helping drivers to make their diesel last that little bit further.

A useful bit of tech on the Leon and becoming increasingly common, is the advisory gear reminders, which suggests when to change up or down to improve efficiency. Sometimes you really don’t want to be told how to drive, but even these little suggestions that really could make a difference to the mpg.

Our Leon is generously equipped, with navigation and bluetooth all controllable through either a touch screen or the controls on the steering wheel. Rear and front parking sensors make driving in traffic and parking particularly easy and the wipers, that live in the A pillar when not in use are an interesting touch. It seems Seat has invested a great deal of time trying to make the Leon stand out from their competitors, the small styling changes, in my opinion, work well and add a bit of character to the car.

A couple of niggles would be the rear wipers which are ridiculously complicated to operate and then even more complicated to turn off and the interior seems to have dated more quickly than the exterior.

Given that choices of sub-100g/km cars of this size are few, the Leon does offer drivers the choice of something that at least looks exciting while it helps to save fuel.