• Plenty of space inside for passengers
• Generous boot capacity at 510 litres
• Lots of storage bins and cubbies

How much space is there?

Ample. There’s more than enough room for four passengers inside the SEAT Ateca – and the cabin has been designed in such a way that you don’t need to compromise on rear-seat leg room if you’ve got two tall people up front. The middle seat on the rear bench is a bit cramped due to the shape of the central tunnel, but the same is said of most family SUVs.

Every door gets a deep storage pocket, while the bin in the centre console is almost big enough to hold everything you might have with you in your car. Wallet, phone, house keys, small pets – it’ll all fit. You even get a sunglasses holder above the rear-view mirror and storage trays under the front seats, which helps keep the cabin clutter-free.

Boot space and storage

Two-wheel drive SEAT Atecas can carry more than their four-wheel drive siblings. The SUV has a seats-up capacity of 510 litres – but if you fold the rear bench flat, that figure swells to 1,604 litres. Lowering the seats is easy, too, as the handles are located in the boot.

Adding four-wheel drive sacrifices 25 litres of boot space, as SEAT had to make room in the SUV’s chassis for the rear differential. Still, we think that’s a relatively small price to pay for the extra off-road capability and on-road stability. As an aside to this, the four-wheel drive diesel Ateca has a maximum towing capacity of 2.1 tonnes.

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The boot floor can be set at two heights to either liberate a little extra space or make it easier to haul items into the boot. The rear bench also folds in a 60:40 split, and there’s a handy load-through flap in the centre seat, which means you can carry both passengers and cumbersome luggage at the same time.

Is it easy to park?

Considering how vast the Ateca’s interior feels, it’s a surprisingly easy car to manoeuvre. There’s plenty of glass, so visibility is good – and you get some extra assistance in the shape of standard-fit front and rear parking sensors. Spend a bit more money on the Xperience variant, and you’ll get a rear-view camera too.

Rather strangely, the Ateca also features park assist as standard, which can automatically steer the car into both parallel and end-on parking spaces. Normally, this sort of technology only arrives on models near the top of a car’s pecking order.

Safety

• Lots of safety equipment as standard
• Five-star Euro NCAP safety rating
• Extra driver assistance tech optional

Euro NCAP awarded the SEAT Ateca a full five-star safety rating – and it’s easy to see why. You get seven airbags, seat belt reminders, electronic stability control, an electronic differential lock (called XDS), hill-hold control and a tyre-pressure monitor all as standard.

All cars come with Front Assist with City Emergency Braking and Pedestrian Protection, Tiredness Recognition and a Multi-Collision Brake system as standard. Every model has cameras and sensors to detect an impending collision and take evasive action if required.

SEAT also offers a range of optional driver assistance technology packages, which add features like traffic sign recognition, adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assist and traffic jam assist, which can take control of the steering brakes and throttle at low speeds. You have to pay extra for these, though.

These systems are clever – but they’re not perfect. The adaptive cruise control fitted to our test car was a little hit-and-miss with its decision making, as it would sometimes slow down for cars in the lane next to us right when we were planning an overtake.

Watch: SEAT Ateca Euro NCAP crash test