Seat will begin offering the new Tarraco in Europe
at the start of 2019 as its new flagship SUV model, marketed as the bigger
brother of the Ateca and Arona models. The new Spanish SUV is named
after the city of Tarragona in Spain. The VW Group hopes that the Tarraco will help bring new
customers to Seat, which hasn’t offered an SUV of this size ever before.
Seat’s new Tarraco will be available with a choice
between two petrol engines and two diesel ones at launch; base petrol models
are powered by the 1.5-liter TSI unit with 150 PS, paired to a six-speed
manual transmission and front-wheel drive.
If you must have all-wheel drive with a petrol
engine, then your only option is the 2.0-liter TSI unit, which makes 190 PS and comes with a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and Seat’s 4Drive
system as standard. Seat claims a 0-100 km/h in 8 seconds flat and a top
speed of 211 km/h.
Diesel models use the same 2.0-liter TDI engine but
with two different outputs: 150 PS and 190 PS respectively. The
147 hp version is available with both front- and all-wheel drive while the more
powerful 187 hp model comes with all-wheel drive and a dual-clutch transmission
as standard.
The new Seat
Tarraco is based on the same MQB-A long-wheelbase platform with the Skoda
Kodiaq. It uses a McPherson strut at the front and a multilink setup at the
rear, with Seat offering the new Tarraco with adaptive dampers. Seat claims
that the Tarraco will be “the sportiest vehicle in the segment”.
The interior can fit up to seven passengers and
features an eight-inch infotainment system with Android Auto, Apple CarPlay and
Amazon Alexa, which can be operated via gesture control as an option. There’s
also a digital instrument cluster with multiple configurations and a
high-definition display, as well as wireless charging and the option of a
BeatsAudio system.
