Cupra used to be a by-word for raw, uncompromising hot hatch perfection. Have things softened in the years since the badge became a brand of its own, and started putting its stamp on the SUV world? We’re driving the sharply-styled Cupra Formentor VZ 310 to see how it stacks up.

Reports by Adam Binnie

Update 1: Welcome

The arrival of this Cupra Formentor has got me in a reflective mood, so apologies while you endure a bit of story time.

Cupra is a new(ish) car brand that until 2018 was just a badge found on the bootlids of the fastest SEAT models – a bit like AMG on a Mercedes-Benz or vRS on a Skoda.

One of the very first cars I drove during my first week at Parkers was the contemporary hot hatch king – a SEAT Leon Cupra, which was being tested for six months by my colleague Gareth. He handed me the keys to his 280hp long termer, in the middle of a frosty January, to someone he’d only met a couple of days previously. Obviously, I didn’t give him time to change his mind.

That car made a lasting impression on me. I’ve always loved a hot hatch but the Cupra offered something different to a VW Golf R or Audi S3 – cars that share the same engine and power. It was the raw, uncompromising way it delivered its power that I loved. And the way it looked.

The engine was loud and boosty, the DSG auto ‘box hung onto low gears belligerently refusing to shift up, and the differential summoned seemingly endless grip from the front axle. It was focussed and exciting and I took a very long way home that night.

Other Cupra models have come and gone through the Parkers office in that time (including a Leon Cupra ST estate long termer, below, that I really wish I’d assigned to myself instead of James Dennison) and with that evolution has come greater refinement and increasing use of all-wheel drive. They’ve all been brilliant cars in their own right, but it was that rigid, scrabbly, 2014 car that sticks in my memory the most.

And so finally we arrive at the Cupra Formentor that will be the subject of this long-term test. And my question is this – now that the badge has broken away as its own entity, with this car be like those wild early Leon Cupra hatches, or the more mature models that followed?

There’s also the question of my own shifting priorities here. I’ve said numerous times now in several different long-term reports how my love of lift-off oversteer and pop and bang exhausts has grown into an appreciation for something quiet and comfortable that can transport my kids and bike around in a relaxing way.

I was never convinced by the assertion that a VW Golf R is as good as being an ordinary Golf as it is a performance hot hatch. No matter the spec I’ve always found the ride hard even in comfort mode and the temptation to use all +300hp too great. Neither of those things is bad of course, but neither are present in a less performance focussed model, and therefore it’s always felt like a Golf R first and foremost.

Well, the good news from my early driving impressions is that is seems the Cupra’s qualities and my own have converged in what might be an absolute Goldilock’s combination of serenity and speed. It’s comfy when it needs to be and searingly fast when it doesn’t. You can drive it slowly with just as much satisfaction as absolutely railing it around a roundabout.

Somehow, and I don’t know whether it’s the iterative improvement of the technologies that enable it, or the fact the Formentor sits higher up, but it’s finally a proper Jekyll and Hyde car. Comfortable enough for passengers to not know they’re sitting in a 310hp monster machine, yet capable of delivering lurid cornering g-force at the press of a button. I really like it.

I also really like the way it looks, the fancy interior lighting (more on this later), the loud Beats stereo, and the factory-fit pops and bangs from the exhaust. I thought engine character had been largely filtered out by successive European emission regulations, and here I am in a car with an exhaust note that wouldn’t sound out of place in Need for Speed Underground.

All of these early impressions prompted a chat with my colleague Luke to try and define my feelings towards the Cupra. Hoping but failing to stumble on a long German or Danish word to describe the sensation of missing something before it has gone, we settled on “anticipatory nostalgia” and “pre-emptive melancholy”.

Putting it simply, I’m really rather taken by the Formentor, and already gutted about the fact it’s not going to be with us forever. The Cupra press office is going to have a fight on its hands getting the keys back.