We’ve had an early go in the most powerful version of the Formentor, complete with a 306bhp wallop and a standard-fit seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox. Neither of the Formentors are available with a manual.

For added sense of occasion, you start the Formentor with a button hung from the steering wheel. Immediately the engine sounds raucous and purposeful, but that’s being amplified through the speakers. If that’s getting tiring, you can tell it to shush by cycling though the many modes – use the Cupra steering wheel button for that. There’s Comfort, Normal, Sport, Cupra and Individual settings to choose from, with the latter letting you tailor the drivetrain’s mood, steering weight, and endlessly fiddle with the ride comfort by altering a sliding scale. It feels terribly scientific.

This isn’t a high-riding road warrior – in fact with the supportive bucket seat lowered electrically into its base position, you could be forgiven for forgetting you were ensconced in a Leon hatchback, not a flagship SUV.

About town, the Formentor is easy-going, as we’re used to for a modern hot hatch. Obviously it feels a bit bigger, but never cumbersome – the steering is quick and light at low speeds, and even on hulking 20-inch rims the ride isn’t crashy in Cupra mode. It’s better still if you slide it into Comfort, though.

Sometimes the twin-clutch gearbox gets caught in two minds slipping its clutches as it does its best softly-softly impression of a true automatic, and it can be tardy to switch between forward drive and reverse when parking, but the Cupra is far from the only DCT car so-afflicted.

In short, this is a sporty crossover that will handle the daily grind chores without complaint. And on the motorway, it’ll cruise at the national speed limit at a tickle over 2,000rpm. Wind noise is hushed up well for a taller car, but that fat rubber kicks up a fair bit of tyre roar.

And normally, that would be job done for a family faux-by-four – for a Seat. But since this is stubbornly a Cupra, it’s supposed to also be an enthralling, thrilling performance car when it’s let off the leash.

With everything dialled up into Defcon Yobbo, the Formentor behaves like a slightly overgrown VW Golf R. It’s not the first time we’ve seen these ingredients have a crack at being a hot hatchback – remember the VW T-Roc R? – and the results are pretty similar.

It’s an extremely rapid device point-to-point, with the advantages of seamless gearshifts, 4x4 traction, huge on-demand torque and a slightly higher vantage point blending to create an undemanding overgrown hot hatch. It’s a very easy car to go extremely fast in, though the overdubbed engine noise in Cupra mode might get on your wick after a while.

The Formentor retains its composure even when you get properly aggressive with your inputs and ambitious in the corners, but it never feels anything other than front-wheel drive with lots of traction, rather than a properly balanced four-wheel drive.

Is it a sweaty-palmed life-affirming invigorator? Well no, but neither are lower-slung ‘true’ hot hatches like Audi S3s or the Octavia vRS. The Volkswagen empire has got very good at building Jekyll-and-Hyde split-personality hot hatches that can be docile one moment and a rabid journey-shrinker the next, but this is never going to be as tactile or involving as, say, a Honda Civic Type R. That said, if you want to dabble in the Porsche Macan experience for a whole heap less cash, the not-a-Seat ticks that particular box.