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SEAT's Tarraco aims to shake up the mid-sized 7-seat SUV market. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Need a family SUV with seven seats? Bored by what's on offer? SEAT hopes you'll like its offering, the Tarraco. You get Volkswagen Group engineering, sharp styling, plenty of interior space and, the Iberian maker hopes, a dash of Spanish flair. Which this car will need to stand out in its segment.

Background
Just how important is it for a mid-range 'D'-segment 7-seat family SUV to be 'sporty'. Not very, according to the key protagonists in this segment. SEAT disagrees and is positioning this car, the Tarraco, as a slightly more responsive choice for folk who want to feel that they're driving more than just a crossover-cultured bus after they've dropped the kids off at school.

Of course, the Spanish maker needed something to set this contender a little apart from the mechanically almost identical Volkswagen Group models that share its MQB-A platform, the Skoda Kodiaq and the Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace. It wasn't so very long ago that SEAT didn't have a single SUV in its line-up. Now, this Tarraco sits at the head of the company's crossover triumvirate that already includes the little Ibiza-based Arona and the slightly larger Leon-structured Ateca. It's the biggest car the brand has yet made and will only be offered in our market with 7 seats. But will it live up to its maker's expectations? Let's find out.

Driving Experience
SEAT says it's put a lot of work into driving feedback so that this car will feel 'sportier' than its rivals. The same people who made its smaller Ateca stablemate so alert and nimble claim to have repeated their magic here, with sharp steering and supple multi-link rear suspension which can be enhanced with optional 'ACC' adaptive damping. The Tarraco offers four direct injection turbocharged engines, two of them petrol, two diesel. Predictably, we've seen them all before in various VW Group models, things kicking off with a 1.5-litre petrol TSI unit mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox and front-wheel drive. The alternative mainstream petrol option, the 190PS 2.0-litre TSI unit, comes only in high spec guise with a 7-speed DSG auto 'box and 4WD. There's also a PHEV Plug-in hybrid variant available, which mates a 1.4-litre TSI petrol engine with an 85kW electric motor and a 13 kWh lithium-ion battery pack.

Both the diesels are 2.0 TDI unit, the choice being between a 150PS powerplant with front wheel drive and a 190PS variant with 4WD. If you're regularly going to be using the third seating row and really loading the car up, then the extra grunt of the pokier powerplants will obviously be useful. The 4WD system that these pricier powertrains offer is, as usual in this class, of the 'on-demand' variety, cutting in when a loss of traction is detected. Predictably, the AWD isn't there to enable any sort of prodigious level of off road prowess; there isn't really the ground clearance for that. Instead, this Tarraco is very firmly tarmac-orientated, like SEAT's other SUVs.