SEAT are a Spanish car manufacturer who, along with Skoda, are part of the Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG).  Therefore, whereas the basic shape and design of the car are carried out by SEAT, most of the mechanical parts are manufactured by Volkswagen or Audi.  The result is a handsome car (in my opinion, better looking than any Volkswagen or Audi) with robust mechanicals that should last for many thousands of miles.  I bought the car from new in November 1999, and have now covered over 26000 miles in it.  So far, nothing has gone wrong with it - the only repair needed was when I hit a deer at 60 mph and dislodged the driver's side foglight and the grill in which it is mounted.

The engine in the car started out as Volkswagen's famous 1.9 turbodiesel, generating a quoted 110 BHP at 4150 RPM and 173 lb-ft of torque at 1900 RPM.  It was noticeable that the engine took quite a while (around 10000 miles) to loosen up fully, and when it had, it had a lot of punch at low revs, as you would expect.  However, the greatest weakness of the engine in that form is the way in which power tails off over 4000 RPM - a bit unnerving in the middle of an overtaking manoeuvre.  The rev limiter had been set at about 4800 RPM, and the approach to the limiter was very slow.

To improve matters, I decided to have a Superchip fitted.  This is a revised engine management system that causes more fuel to be injected than in the standard system, allows the turbo boost to run to higher levels, and it also raises the rev limit to about 5200 RPM.  With the Superchip in place, the new power output is 135 BHP, with a peak torque of 208 lb-ft, which is held from about 1800 to 3000 RPM (source - Diesel Car Magazine, April 2000).  It should be noted that the Superchip does not cause stresses on components to exceed absolute manufacturers tolerances.  I could boost power and torque further by fitting a high performance air filter, exhaust, etc, but the car now performs adequately for my requirements.

With the Superchip fitted, the car really does perform with a sting in its tail.  I would suspect that overall performance is about the same as that of my previous car, a Rover 420 with 136 BHP (but only 136 lb-ft of torque), which could do 0-60 MPH in 8.5 seconds.  However, for in-gear performance, the Toledo would annihilate the Rover.  Flooring the throttle in fifth gear at about 60 MPH causes a real shove in the back, I never experienced that with the Rover.  The effect is multiplied in the lower gears.  The only problem is the fact that the rev limit is still too low, the car will only just pull 25 MPH in first (Rover: 40 MPH) and 50 in second (Rover: 65 MPH).  For Grand-prix starts from the traffic lights the Rover (and many other petrol cars) win.  On the other hand the Toledo does over 50 MPG, virtually regardless of how you drive it.  It also produces a lot of smoke under hard acceleration (which incidentally it did before the Superchip was installed).  This is mildly embarrassing if you are trying to overtake someone who is giving you a good run for your money!