The face of the SEAT Altea, which will be backed by a £3m advertising campaign, will become the new face of the Spanish brand.

The Altea went on sale in the UK on July 10 and SEAT has confirmed its looks will adorn the new generation Toledo and Leon models.

The new car is not a mini multi-purpose vehicle, nor is it a conventional hatchback, but a little of both. SEAT calls it an MSV -- Multi Sports Vehicle.

SEAT hopes it will create a new sector in the market and attract younger buyers to the its range, whose buyers are currently an average of 45 years of age.

A first drive in the Altea around speed camera-flanked roads, near Watford, displayed a quiet, comfortable well-built, spacious five-door car, with a clean, modern, high-tech interior and all the well-engineered hallmarks of its Volkswagen/Audi owners.

Neat touches include wipers which tuck away either side of the windscreen leaving a completely open view of the road ahead.

The Altea is the first SEAT sold in Europe to be equipped as standard with six airbags: driver and passenger airbag, front side airbag and curtain airbag, as well as three-point anchoring on all seatbelts and in the front, seatbelts with pre-tensioners and active front head restraints. The rear seat has the Isofix system for fixing child seats.

Altea prices start at £12,850 and rise through the eight-model range to £17,600. There is the option of 1.6 and 2.0-litre petrol and 1.9 and 2.0-litre diesel engines.

In addition to a choice of four engines, the Altea is available in three specification levels: Reference, Stylance and Sport. The entry-level Reference model's standard equipment includes anti-lock brakes and traction control, twin front airbags, side and curtain airbags, air conditioning, a six-speaker radio/CD player, powered one-touch front windows, remote central locking and more than 30 storage compartments.

SEAT believe 60 per cent of Altea sales will be for the versions costing under £14,000.

Mark McKenna, SEAT's UK head of marketing, said since the repositioning of the SEAT brand under the Audi Brand Group, the Altea was the first product to come out of the new group's 'sport design technology ideals' concept.

He said: "In future we will have an extrovert image with cars of a sporting design. Up to 18 months ago we were known as the affordable brand. Now we are moving to producing products with sporting design and greater performance, but we don't want to lose what we are already known for."

McKenna added: "We started selling SEAT cars in the UK in 1985 and by 1995 our annual sales had climbed steadily to 11,000 vehicles, but from then until 2003 they climbed rapidly to 34,000 units.

"We do not plan to oversupply vehicles and damage residual values -- ours are better than most of the main volume manufacturers and we don't want to lose that.

"We are not a volume brand, we are not up-market and we want customers to come to us out of choice. We see the Altea giving us incremental growth with 2,500 sales this year and 5,000 next."

McKenna also revealed that 95 per cent of inquiries for their products came to them by the web.