Word. That would be really great.

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I second that. I like the clean back doors... I thought it was a 2 door when I first looked at it. awsome!

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They sell it in Mexico and actually SEAT has proved to be very successful in there. You could always buy a brand new Cupra in Mexico and import it to the States, couldn't that be possible? After all if you are concerned about the after sales support, your local VW/Audi dealer could help , the Cupra underneath is nothing else than a Rabbit/A3!

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AsusDF;

I think many of us Yanks wished it was that simple. With federal regs in the U.S. being what they are, you'd have to make sure the thing was smog legal to U.S. standards (Euro and American standards are different, unfortunately), passed NHTSA crash tests (ditto, it'd be nice if we could just standardize worldwide and make it cheaper and easier on the manufacturers... then again, that'd probably hurt our domestic companies because the floodgates of alternative machines would roll in if there was no costs to recertify), and had all of the head, tail, and markers/signals at their proper U.S. regulated restrictions/rules. It's not a simple "buy one in Mexico, Canada, etc." and ship it here and get your groove on. There'd be changes to be made.

I do remember seeing someone bring a Citroen XM to my homestate (Illinois) a # of years back while Citroen was still making it (probably late 80's and early-mid 1990's when I saw it driving around). To get it to be legal here, they had to swap the headlights out and replace them with the headlights out of a late 80's and early 1990's Pontiac Grand Prix, I also believe it had to have some tacky add-on rubber bumper pads (go look at some of the old Lamborghini Countach picts from the 80's when they were brought to the U.S.) added so the bumper height was to U.S. certifications. Scarily, the headlights and markers fit better than you'd imagine they would but the gaps around the lights were horrendous and it lost a great deal of it's appeal because of the execution. It still was cool to see something that different (good old Citroen quirkiness... it made Saab's and Subaru's look plain Jane by comparison! LoL) driving around here, it also amazed me how small that car was in comparison to other mid-sizers in the U.S. I mean, honestly... it looked dwarfed next to the old GM10 cars, almost looked petite compared to some of our Sub-compacts.

The moral is... yeah it can be done, but at what cost, and do you really want the outcome?

Personally... I've written letters to Seat and VW on numerous occasions. Before I'd import a Mexican Seat, I'd try to get more people to flood VW/Audi with letters to bring Seat itself stateside and pay to get the things certified proper from the get-go. I've told them before that they could market them as a budget "Spanish-style" alternative to what Alfa Romeo's spirit/passion is about (after all, they use "Auto Emocion" as their marketing slogan) but in a more cost-effective package (i.e. not BMW/Mercedes-area, after all... that's where Audi and to some degree... VW itself have tried to place themselves).

As much as people love Alfa's (and I do myself, for the interior/exterior styling as well as the sporting characteristics they're known for), having a car with the passionate styling and sporting driving characteristics that's not going to cost an arm and a leg and that most importantly... is solid, reliable transportation... I think they'd sell a ton of 'em here. I know if the Leon or Ibiza was here, I'd probably have cross-shopped it when I bought my car (Scion tC) back in '07, just as long as they could offer them here for similar price tags/value to the tC and Mazda 3s (which honestly, could be a problem as it might hurt VW in sales as they might sell less GTI's and Rabbit's and Jetta's and more Seat's but... what hurt them more IMHO is the fact many of us are not in either one anyhow). I mean, while I love the GTI/GLI and actually was originally planning on cross-shopping them... the Rabbit (Golf) and Jetta were too little car for the $ (I didn't want the inline 5) and the GLI/GTI was too costly to get with the options I wanted vs. what I eventually bought.

Seat's, from what I've heard, are generally cheaper than the VW's while offering more performance and value for the $. If I could get a car like the Ibiza or Leon or Exeo (Sport or Cupra) for the upper-level costs of a Rabbit or Jetta, something that had GTI/GLI level performance at $18-20k before options... I'd have been game. Otherwise... as great as the VW's are, they've escalated in price above some of the competition to where they're in another price rung. IMHO, that's a problem that will hurt them going forward as they'll concede sales and market share to their competition.

While VW seems bent on buying into Suzuki... and while that might not necessarily be a bad thing for Suzuki itself (actually would be great to get out of the rungs of GM and GM Daewoo), the thing I see is that VW has a plethora of other brands sold in Europe that could be brought stateside at no additional costs to them (other than maybe to consider opening up a line at the VW plant in Mexico to build them, assuming they can assure the build quality there would be better than recent VW offerings from there) and that would help grow their sales volume in the U.S. Seat, IMHO, is at the top of that list. They're too good of a design to keep out of the states.

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Same here. SEAT always seems to get the nice goods (powertrain-wise) from the VW/Audi stable as well, despite being the lower-end model really.

I'd personally be happy if VWoA would just choose to use this engine for the GTI, it's obviously fine for FWD applications as that's what this car has. There's little need for the GTI to soldier on with 200hp when the engine can easily be bumped up to to be more competitive in the class.

Then, they could bump up the power a bit for the R20 to set it apart.

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They are popular here in Mexico and somewhat in Canada as far as I know , Seat is selling tons of the new Ibiza's down here in Mexiland , gotta love that car!! www.seat-mexico.com.mx

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I don't have any facts to back this up, so this is just my opinion- but I think Americans are adverse to hatchbacks because they used to denote a cheap car, and up until relatively recently nobody here had a whole lot of reason to buy a small, fuel efficient (or not) hatchback over a large four door sedan or a truck.

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Personally, I think they remind most too much of a station wagon which is also almost universally hated here.

On the other hand, I love my hatchback and would have no problems buying a wagon. Just too bad that fewer and fewer automakers are building wagons for us Yanks. I am glad to see more hatchbacks coming out lately though.

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