Cupra Raval review

Cupra’s done well here. Not gimmicky, but interesting. There’s a 10.25-inch driver’s display augmented by a 12.9-inch Android OS touchscreen, which feels big but not silly. It’s responsive and useful, with decent hierarchy, and there’s volume and temp sliders underneath. Not a high bar to be better than previous VW efforts on the touchscreen front, but welcome nonetheless.

The dash is curved and textured with a scale design a bit like a Cupra triangle, the horizontal insert a kind of semi-flexible 3D printed net in a contrast colour, while projectors in the dash that throw pretty patterns on the doorcards, but not in a flashy way.

And the Raval gets anodised interior bits to make them more interesting – the outside of the initial test car was a green shade called ‘Manganese matt’ (sic) and the interior trim was coloured a nice shade of light green. For reference ‘Plasma Iridescent’ is also very cool – kind of a flip grey/purple. It’s not pretentious.

Shout out to the seats here: in the VZ Extreme you get 3D ‘knitted’ Cup buckets which are really rather lovely – firm but not clenching, comfortable, but with enough support when you need it. Although again, the other trim levels need a look to see if ‘Skin Feel’ leather (that’s what it says) stands up to the billing.

All that said, in the lesser trim levels the effect is less successful. This is cabin design by schizophrenia, with a Playdoh dash top giving way to rose gold plastic, then a fussy textured layer before the old Polo offcuts. Then there’s the grotesque faux carbon airbag cover and the duplicated drive mode buttons hanging from the steering like plastic testicles.

Cupra still has a whiff of Volkswagen leaving a design studio unlocked overnight, and coming back in the morning to find some drunk anime illustrators have let themselves in and jazzed up a Golf.

How much room is there in the back?

The back seat accommodation is tight behind a six-foot driver, but let’s face it, a wheelbase of 2,599mm can only hold so much. In reality, it’s about what you’d expect for the class.

The surprise is the boot – at 441-litres including the capacious underfloor, it’s much bigger than you’d expect given that it dwarfs what you’ll find in a Golf. And yes, it does drop well below the (moveable) boot floor, but it’s real space rather than split into weird shapes.