SEAT Arona - Practicality, comfort and boot space

On the face of it, there’s not too much to complain about with the Arona’s packaging and practicality. There’s plenty of room up front for two adults, of course, and you’re unlikely to get too many complaints about headroom or shoulder room if you ask a couple more to jump into the back seats.

The SEAT has a reasonably sized boot compared with its closest rivals. There’s enough space for most of a small family’s needs. However, other baby SUVs provide greater luggage space these days.

Size

The Arona typifies how tightly knit car manufacturers’ ranges are these days. It’s 4,138mm long, 1,780mm wide (including mirrors), and 1,543mm tall – which makes it longer than a SEAT Ibiza and considerably taller than a SEAT Leon.

However, the car’s wheelbase – always a good guide to how much interior space there will be – is 2,566mm. That’s only a couple of millimetres more than a five-door Ibiza’s, showing that, despite the increase in length, there’s not that much extra knee- or legroom over the Arona’s supermini cousin.

Leg room, head room & passenger space

Rear headroom is reasonably generous in the back of an Arona, but passengers may complain about leg- and knee room. Rivals such as the Skoda Kamiq (which uses the same platform as the Arona, albeit with a longer wheelbase) offer greater space for a six-foot adult in the back, while other small SUVs like the Citroen C3 Aircross and Renault Captur have an innovative sliding rear seat, which trades some boot space for rear passenger accommodation. 

Two Isofix points are provided on the outer rear seating positions.

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Boot

Every Arona comes with an adjustable height boot floor as standard across the range, allowing you to prioritise either outright space or a flat loading area with the rear seats folded down. The boot aperture is reasonably wide for such a compact vehicle. There are a couple of hooks at the sides of the boot for shopping bags, while Xperience models and above with the Storage Pack have four tie-down points to lash items to.

The overall capacity is 400 litres, rising to 823 litres if you lower both parts of the 60/40 split rear seat. That’s more than the likes of the Honda HR-V and Captur (with its seats rear seats pushed all the way back), but it is smaller than Ford Puma, Hyundai Kona, and Nissan Juke.

Towing

Both the 109bhp 1.0-litre and 148bhp 1.5-litre petrol models have a maximum braked trailer weight of 1,200kg, which is 50kg shy of the 1.0-litre Juke.

For maximum towing capacity in a small SUV, look at the four-wheel drive ‘4Motion’ VW T-Roc, because that can tow up to 1700kg in both 2.0-litre petrol and diesel forms.