Overview

Well, these are two pretty similar cars we have here! It's only details that could potentially make the difference. Considering they both belong to the small family car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Hyundai-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 140hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 150hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

Safety

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Korean car offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Reliability

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Hyundai does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Hyundai, as well as Seat, with the same average rating of 4.5 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed i30 as average reliability-wise, and Leon is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Korean car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Performance & Fuel economy

Seat is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 215 kilometers per hour, 5km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Spanish car, averaging around 4.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (59 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to the Korean car.

Verdict

Hyundai appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In my opinion, everything taken into account, the Korean car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Seat being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Seat. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. In case you have two minutes to spare I invite you to define your needs, desires and budget and see which car would be chosen by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.