Cupra Ateca review: the fastest versions are still great fun to drive
The Cupra Ateca comes with plenty of performance and lots of kit, although many of its rivals feel fresher now
The ‘hot SUV’ already existed when the Cupra Ateca launched, but this mid-size SUV quickly proved to be one of the best. It can’t quite rival a hatchback in terms of dynamics and value for money, but it’s more fun to drive than you’d expect. Plus, it’ll give traditional hot hatches such as the Honda Civic Type R and Ford Focus ST a run for their money when it comes to straight-line performance, and it’s loaded with standard kit. You’ll just need to convince your friends that it’s so much more than a standard Ateca with some fancy badges and a body kit.
About the Cupra Ateca
When is a SEAT Ateca not a SEAT Ateca? When it’s a Cupra Ateca, of course. When the Ateca was first introduced in 2018, it quickly became the third best-selling car in the SEAT range, despite competing in the challenging mid-size SUV segment. The rebranding exercise of Cupra only built on this success, even if it’s at the detriment of its sibling firm.
Cupra sales grew 93 per cent in 2022 compared to SEAT sales dropping by 18 per cent, and the shift in momentum towards the new, sporty brand has led Volkswagen Group boss Thomas Schafer to regard Cupra as the future of SEAT. Despite being the firm’s first model, the Cupra Ateca hasn’t quite had the same success as the bespoke Cupra Formentor or even the excellent Cupra Born electric car, which has bloodied the nose of its VW ID.3 sibling.
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Cupra’s first car has had plenty of competition in the past five years. There’s the mechanically similar VW Tiguan R and Audi SQ2, plus the BMW X1 M35i and even four-cylinder versions of the Porsche Macan and Alfa Romeo Stelvio (which we tested against the Cupra Formentor). To help give the Cupra Ateca wider appeal, it’s gained two additional engine options – a 1.5-litre turbocharged unit with 148bhp and a detuned 2.0-litre with 187bhp. The 1.5-litre gets a front-wheel drive system, whereas the more powerful 2.0-litre model gets an all-wheel drive set-up.
The hottest VZ versions (short for ‘veloz’, meaning fast in Spanish) get a derivative of the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine you’ll find in cars such as the SEAT Leon Cupra, Volkswagen Golf R and Golf GTI, and here it delivers 296bhp and 400Nm of torque. As a result, this SUV with hot hatch aspirations will sprint from 0-62mph in 4.9 seconds.
It’s also well-equipped with a 9.2-inch digital cockpit for the driver, a central 9.2-inch touchscreen, bespoke Cupra seats, plenty of Cupra design details inside and out, plus a tweaked chassis no matter what engine you choose.
SEAT has gone to great lengths to remove all traces of the company’s badge from the Cupra Ateca, but the fact remains that this is essentially a repackaged version of the excellent SEAT Ateca SUV. That means you gain pretty much all the practicality of the SEAT in the sportier Cupra.
It’s not cheap though. The Cupra Ateca has gone through a few price hikes in its life and now stands at over £52,000 for the most expensive VZN version. The cheapest V1 with the least powerful 1.5-litre engine costs around £36,500 – which is roughly how much the Cupra Ateca cost when it first went on sale.
Frequently Asked Questions
On the surface the Cupra Ateca manages to successfully mix hot hatch performance with the practicality of a SEAT Ateca. If you delve a little deeper into the Cupra Ateca’s driving dynamics you’ll find it doesn’t quite stack up to any hot hatch (let alone the Volkswagen Golf R with which it shares its mechanical underpinnings). We don’t really see the point of the lesser-powered Cupra Atecas.
