I am seeing more and more R-Lines on Cheshire roads these days. Maybe I have started to notice them, and Golf in general, since I ordered by GTI PP in April.
As for the 1.4 TFSI engine in the Leon, it's a great engine in many ways. I have driven an A4 for two years with this engine, and averaged 38mpg in almost exclusively rush hour traffic. I only drive about 7k per year.
The 1.4 has a decent amount of punch, and can feel genuinely quick in the right conditions like a fast A-road, dual carriageway or motorway.
However, it can be caught out, and feel flat and sluggish at times. Typically pulling out from any junction on an incline. Then the weight of the A4, which is about that of a current Golf, really tells and the car crawls forwards. Only when the revs finally rise to about 1500 does it jump forward.
This can be alarming at roundabouts etc with a car bearing down on you. So, I have adjusted my driving style to cope, slipping the clutch and building revs first.
However, even that fails sometimes if the incline is too much, then the revs die and the car bogs down. Maybe this is less of an issue with a DSG, but that was not an option on the A4 1.4 TFSI in early 2016.
Have to say though that the engine is very refined for something so small. Superb compared to our 2.0 diesel Touran (17 plate), and way better than my colleagues 4 cylinder petrol A class Merc which really sounds rough when revved!