Fast 4x4s twin test: Cupra Ateca vs Skoda Kodiaq vRS

Here we are then. It wasn’t me, and it probably wasn’t you either, but the critical mass behind tall hatchbacks has now spawned fast ones. The hot hatch SUV. We asked for this.

Crossover-SUVs are too much of a money-printer to ignore, and much as the car industry might hope that iPhone connectivity and forty-three ambient lighting colours are what sells cars, truth is that people are still grabbed by performance. Sporty sells. Give a car a chinny bodykit, a fleet of exhaust pipes and pretend it’s what astronauts and race drivers take to the shops, and we’ll crash the online configurator.

But woah there. Won’t somebody think of the compromises? The hot crossover will have the centre of gravity of Richard Osman, ride with all the finesse of a derailed express train and deliver the acceleration to fuel consumption ratio of a rocket ground test. You’d prefer a proper hot hatchback. No?

Photography: Mark Fagelson & Jonathan Fleetwood

Undaunted, Seat has built an entirely new brand around the idea of a humble Ateca blessed with the beating heart and running gear from the VW Golf R. Meanwhile in Prague, 1,500 miles from Barcelona, Skoda’s opted to fit the even bigger Kodiaq with the most powerful 2.0-litre diesel engine it could get its hands on.

We’re talking four cylinders, two turbos, and 369lb ft of surging low-rev torque. Oof. You get less torque in a Porsche Panamera.

So, where’s it hiding? Diesels basically trade on being anti-climactic, so healthy as the Kodiaq’s numbers are on paper, it doesn’t charge like a disturbed rhinoceros despite looking like one. It’s 2019. We’re way too spoiled to be impressed by 0-62mph times that start with a seven. It’s brisk enough to execute an overtake with disdain for a dawdler. It won’t struggle with all seven seats occupied. But exciting? Engaging? Nope.

Skoda must’ve sussed this out, because it fitted something called a ‘Dynamic Sound Booster’. Part throaty exhaust, part Baby’s First Autotune, it’s the single most bizarre engine noise enhancer I’ve ever come across. The noise is… just a noise, a resonant droning burble that probably wants to sound like an Audi SQ7’s V8 but reminds me more of a Bugatti Veyron, idling in a shipping container. Not a pleasant, expensive soundtrack, but the grumble of lumps of air being moved from place to place.

TG’s windswept and rain-soaked masses agreed it was best to delve into the many, many menus buried in the fiddly touchscreen, and turn the speakerphone exhaust off (might have just been an excuse to go indoors). And, while you’re in there, tap-tap-tap the suspension into Comfort mode to take the edge off the nadgety ride you suffer for the handsome 20-inch rims. That’s better.

Oh yes, you can play with the stiffness of the ride, you get a 9.2-inch touchscreen that’s trickier to use than Skoda’s smaller, cheaper interfaces, though standard Apple and Android mirroring help, and 20-inch wheels – the tip of a spec iceberg. LED lights front and rear, an electric driver’s seat, auto wipers, tinted glass, virtual dials, and twin umbrellas in the front doors all feature. Because, we suspect, Skoda knows this 237bhp TDI Kodiaq isn’t sufficiently special to drive to justify costing £5k more than a Kodiaq Sportline, so it’s made it the undisputed range-topper for kit.

Everyone who happened across our sliver of prime Welsh B-road liked the idea of the Skoda. The bigness, the swiftness, the potential for sensible fuel consumption when you’re not On It. People liked the way it looked, and how unpretentious Skodas normally are. It’s the sort of car the kids will give a name to. But no-one leapt at the idea of a £42,870 Skoda. Or, as tested with a glass roof, heated front and rear seats and a motorised boot door, over £47,000. “I’ll wait for depreciation to do its thing, thanks” was uttered more than once.

So, the Sea-, sorry, Cupra is off to a flier. It costs from £35,900, and this one, buckling under the weight of Comfort, Sound and Design packs (some driver aids, heated this and that and a Beats hi-fi, plus Brembo brakes and black/copper garnish) is as fully loaded as it gets and still only just crests £41k. One-nil to Cupra.

This is also a much, much faster car. Thanks to a 2.0-litre petrol engine with 296bhp, the same seven-speed DSG paddleshift ‘box as the Skoda and four-wheel drive, it goes from 0-62mph in a bragging rights-claiming 5.2 seconds. That’s more like hot hatch pace. Two-nil. Pity it sounds flat, thanks to emissions regs suffocating any warble-factor parps, we suspect.

Still, we can even the scores straight back up by pointing out the Skoda comes as standard with seven seats while the Ateca only has five, making it none more practical than a Leon wagon most of the time. The Kodiaq is also happy to be known as a Skoda, while explaining the Cupra and its drunken hen-night tramp stamp tattoo badge gets tiresome. As Top Gear brain-in-chief Paul Horrell observed “even AMG doesn’t take the ‘Mercedes’ out of the name of bespoke cars like the GT. So what are they thinking trying to pretend the Ateca Cupra is nothing to do with Seat?” Agreed.

Fun as it is to get bogged down in the bonkers semantics of trying to launch a luxury sub-brand with a tarted-up school bus, the Cupra does have its good points. Chiefly, the point when you lob it down the B4560 in the damp, expecting to get soaked by a torrential deluge of underwhelm-ment, it’s actually quite sorted. Reminded me of a boring-sounding Audi RS3, in fact. It’s all about solidity, security, and brainless point-to-point pace. You can’t agitate or excite it, but you can point it between corners and trust wholeheartedly it’ll stick, turn and go with ease.

It’s the classic front-wheel drive car with infinite traction sensation – you never sense the rear tyres are helping until you hear the fronts slip momentarily, but it’s very stable, locked down and efficient at haring along. The ride, too taut in town, finds its mojo with speed.

Much as I’m loath to admit it, sitting up at lorry driver bum height is handy for peering over hedges and over crests too. Ironically, sitting up high means you’re better sighted to drive like a wally. And as a result, clatter into the limits of the Cupra’s talents that bit sooner. It’s quick and competent, but it doesn’t disguise its weight like a grown-up performance SUV from the likes of Porsche or AMG. The suspension and brakes aren’t techy enough to show physics the ol’ slight of hand.

Better than the Kodiaq? Undoubtedly. The vRS is too remote and cumbersome to be a proper performance car. Its body control sags, the steering’s unnervingly numb and it feels two sizes bigger than the more obedient, agile, 265kg lighter Cupra.

It’s Thunderbird 2, fairly quick but big, cumbersome and utilitarian. Justifying why you’d spend £42k on one instead of buying a spec’ed up slower one and going on nicer Caribbean holidays is trickier than explaining what ‘Cupra’ means to a Brecon Beacons dogwalker.

Though the seven-seat Kodiaq can’t be defeated for practicality, and it got much, much closer to its claimed fuel economy than the Cupra, it’s lost in no man’s land, ready to cater for a savvy buyer in three years and thirty grand’s time. A regular Kodiaq is too good, too sensible a car to pull off going irrational. Colleague Stephen Dobie returns from a fevered drive atop the Skoda, peering at its fussy digital dials from the embrace of its superb bucket seats, and sums it up thus: “It’s a great boring car, but a terrible interesting one.”

The Cupra then, is the better value, better hot hatch that’s not a hot hatch. Can it win the wider battle, and create its own slice of budget super-SUV must-have cool? Stranger ideas have caught on. Over to you again, then: the people.

Cupra Ateca

7/10

£35,900 (£41,175 as tested)
1984cc turbocharged 4cyl, 296bhp, 295lb ft
7spd DCT, AWD
0-62mph in 5.2sec, 153mph
38.2mpg, 168g/km CO2
1615kg

Skoda Kodiaq vRS

5/10

£42,870 (£47,350 as tested)
1968cc 4cyl twin-turbo diesel, 237bhp, 369lb ft
7spd DCT, AWD
0-62mph in 7.0sec, 136mph
35.3mpg, 167g/km CO2
1880kg