When the Seat Ateca came out I remember being disappointed – the car is by no means bad-looking, but I felt it should have been much more adventurous than it turned out. By taking design cues from the Leon and stretching them over a more upright, formal crossover body the Ateca lost a lot of what made its hatchback sister model so handsome and attractive. But what really killed me is that that the Ateca looks less like a stablemate to the Leon, but rather more like a smaller, 5-seat version of…
…Skoda Kodiaq. I mean, there is similar design and then there is this! I fully recognize that, for better or worse (worse if you ask me), VAG decided that Seat and Skoda should share some models with minimal changes (the hapless Skoda Rapid and Seat Toledo come to mind), and it’s quite likely that the Ateca will in fact spawn the second-generation Skoda Yeti, or that the Kodiaq will become a 7-seat Seat crossover. Fine. But what’s fascinating to me is that the similarities between these cars are 100% clear, but upon closer inspection the cars are curiously not that similar. A couple examples: the Ateca’s wing mirrors are mounted on the doors, while the Kodiaq’s are mounted in the corner of the glass area; both have a strong shoulder-line, but the door handles are curiously lower on the Kodiaq; the Kodiaq has a clamshell hood while the Ateca has a conventional one etc. All in all, these two cars look like they were designed at the same time by one designer as 5/7-seat versions of a compact SUV, and then these drawings were separated, Parent Trap-style, between two manufacturers who each got to implement them their own way. Curious…
