Life with a Cupra Formentor: Month 5
Time has been called on our eye- catching crossover. Will it be missed? - 23 February 2022
"Is that a Lamborghini?” No, stranger in the supermarket car park, it isn’t – but you’re not the first to ask.
The Cupra badge is clearly still something of a mystery to many Brits, because after several months and 15,000 miles with our Formentor, I continued to find that people wanted to stop and talk about it when I was out and about.
That was especially true at night, which I chalk up to the prominent rear light bar and interestingly shaped LED headlights, which look tastefully futuristic.
Factor in the angular design and bronze trim accents, plus the fact that sister brand Seat has resisted the urge to release its own version, and you’ve got an undeniably distinctive car. Prospective owners who relish the attention would be wise to spring for the Petrol Blue Matte paint (a £1860 cost), which, I think, is much more menacing than our car’s (admittedly less expensive) Urban Silver.
I hadn’t had a long-term test car I’d consider ‘fun to drive’ for a while, so I was keen to explore the Formentor’s dynamic ability. It didn’t disappoint: the supportive seats hug you nicely in place through corners, the adaptive dampers tighten everything up when you find a fine stretch of road, and the PHEV powertrain delivers as much power as a Volkswagen Golf GTI. The augmented engine note was a little too fake for my liking, and having all the power sent to the front wheels could make the steering more than a little lively under full throttle, but the overall experience was much closer to a hatchback than the many 4x4s that use the same platform.
The Formentor’s hybrid system was at its most efficient on shorter journeys where I could plug in at either end, letting me largely rely purely on electricity. I don’t remember ever seeing the claimed 33 miles of range, but even during the colder months, EV mode could handle trips of 20-plus miles without calling the petrol engine into action. Fully electric driving was always nicely refined and super-smooth.
In reality, though, those trips were the exception to the rule. Most of my driving typically involves racking up long motorway miles between photoshoots in rural locations, with little opportunity to charge. So mid-journey top-ups for the Cupra weren’t really an option, with its low maximum 3.6kW charge rate requiring a three-hour wait at a public charger. I know rapid charging on PHEVs is a thorny issue among EV owners, who are entirely dependent on public chargers when travelling far from home, but it really would have boosted my EV-only miles.
My biggest bugbear with the Formentor was its climate controls – just as it has been for virtually all of my colleagues whenever they’ve driven a recent Volkswagen Group model. Ditching physical controls in favour of on-screen ones seems like such a backwards step, and one that makes me think twice about whether I really need to turn the heating up while at motorway speeds. The touch-sensitive slider bar beneath the infotainment display doesn’t have any more haptic feedback than a touchscreen, and the fact no one thought to add some sort of backlight for easier night-time use is a real head-scratcher.
I eventually came around on the rest of the infotainment set-up, having initially been put off by the overly vibrant colours and iPhone-like icons. It didn’t take long to learn where the most important functions were, and the combination of physical steering-wheel buttons and a fully digital instrument binnacle meant most things could be changed on the fly without taking my eyes off the road. Apple CarPlay was still my go-to for convenient navigation and music playback, though: the Waze nav app really is unbeatable when you have to be somewhere in a hurry.
In all other respects, the Formentor slotted into my lifestyle rather well. Practicality was as you might expect from a car of its size, with plenty of room for rear passengers and a boot full of shopping despite the sloping roof. Admittedly, my camera gear did flow over onto the rear seats during the week, and I was unable to fit a ladder in like I could with the comparatively giant Ford Tourneo I ran previously, but the car made up for it in other ways. Such as the heated steering wheel and seats, which were a dream in the depths of winter. The wheel in particular got properly toasty, which was very welcome after long days of shooting outside in the cold.
My biggest takeaway from my time behind the warm wheel has to be the Formentor’s versatility. To me, it looks equally at home in a city centre or in the wilderness. It can be a sedate and comfortable motorway cruiser one moment and a B-road entertainer the next, in a high-riding body that doesn’t compromise driver engagement. And in hybrid form, it delivers decent electric-only range, if you’re able to charge it regularly.
That the Formentor line-up stretches from a 150bhp base model to a five-pot flagship (albeit left-hand drive only and in very limited numbers) shows how multifaceted Cupra’s halo car really is. It will be a tough act for its replacement to follow.
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