Cupra Tavascan review

The front seats are impressively supportive high-back buckets, electrically adjustable on the one we drove. In front of you is an extrovertly designed dash, with areas of rich-feeling suedalike, copper-hued plastic and poor-feeling diamond-embossed stuff.

It’s a shame the embossed plastic is the material chosen for the main feature, a spar that runs from below the screen back to the console. It feels cheap when it's meant to provide a sense of structure like, we assume, the flying buttresses on any Gothic-period cathedral.

More troublingly, its shape means there's only a small tray below it, where most EVs can provide a deep and useful storage bin. There is space below the armrest though.
Cupra took time to tell us the vents are record-breakingly slim, for which, well, gosh. But they do look good. Indeed the whole thing does. The materials are modern and the ambient lighting, which also pierces the material in the door cards, is surprisingly jolly.

The driver's screen is a bit small but does the basics. Most action goes on in the centre screen, which at 15-inches has the space to do all you'd need. It works snappily and can be customised with useful shortcuts and widgets. For instance your favoured combo of assist settings (by law they all default to on when you stop the car) can be activated with just one downward swipe plus one jab.

Wireless phone mirroring is included, but using the built-in satnav means better driver-screen and HUD screen directions, and it also has an EV planner that'll tell you the best places to stop and charge on a long journey, so you spend the least time plugged in.

A head-up display is optional. Mostly it shows the same as the driver's screen, but gives bigger AR graphics when the active cruise is on, or you're at a junction. There's also a LED rail along the base of the windscreen that gives you peripheral-vision clues, for instance sweeping left-to-right as you approach a right turn.

Any good for families?

In the back, the outer seats are quite dished, which both supports you and provides a bit more room, but that makes the middle one a booby prize. Anyway, there's enough headroom despite the plunging roof line, and plenty of leg space if the front seats are lifted from their very lowest position so you can tuck your feet under.

The tall front seats make it feel a bit dark back there though, partly ameliorated by a third side window behind the door. There are double power sockets and rear climate control.

Teenagers and parents, provided they can agree on choice of tracks, will appreciate the excellent Sennheiser stereo. It doesn't sound like a stereo; it sounds like music.

Boot space is deep and, and fairly tall if you drop the two-level floor, so it's 540 litres under the parcel shelf.

The Tavascan isn't made in Spain or Germany with its VW Group cousins. It's from China, like most of your other consumer gadgets. There's no direct Chinese Government stake in the plant, unlike with MG.