Cupra Formentor review

There are plenty of options to choose from in the Formentor range, all of them with a very healthy base spec. For our money, we’d be quite happy lower down the range provided we could shoehorn one of the decently powerful engines in there.

For comparison, the cheapest Formentor is the V1 TSI 150, with the 1.5-litre motor, which kicks off the bidding at £30,205. The auto gearbox adds £1,535, while the 2.0-litre 186bhp motor in V1 guise will cost you £35k and the 201bhp version of the PHEV starts at £38,095 in the same spec.

If you want the sort of power that Cupra hot hatches made their name with, you’ll have to pay for it – the 242bhp plug-in electric car is the wrong side of forty grand and the 306bhp engine starts at £43,125 in VZ2 guise, rising up to £46,210 in VZ3’s top spec. Of course, the PHEV is best for tax bills, with emissions ranging from 27-33g/km CO2. The rest of the range starts at a respectable 143g/km and works its way up to a slightly naughtier 194g/km.

If you’re looking at leasing a Formentor, the entry-level 1.5 V1 will cost around £385 a month, the 2.0-litre will start around £450 and the full-powered car £600 a month. Strangely the cheapest car when we had a look at the range was the VZ1 PHEV at £375 a month, so it’s worth shopping round the spec sheet. 

Adaptive dampers are standard on the range-topping models, and will be a worthwhile box to tick on lesser versions. If you’re optioning up a tall-yet-sporty family car with big wheels, why not use technology to undo some of that compromise?