Cupra Terramar review

Many roads in Spain are as random in their corner radii, and as grumbly in their surfaces, and as exaggerated in their cambers as British ones. That's perhaps why we like the way Cupra's Spanish engineers (oh by the way, the Terramar is built at Audi's plant in Gyor, Hungary) tune their suspensions.

We tested the Terramar in its VZ trim, which is Cupra-speak for the sportiest version. Tall 'sports' crossovers often have an offensive ride with too much lateral rocking. But the Terramar uses its suspension and dampers better.

The ride is genuinely supple over broken surfaces, and it retains that quality even if you set the adaptive dampers up a notch or two on the multi-point menu to quell body heave.

The steering remains pretty delicate and progressive and there's little on-board sensation of roll. That said, there's not a lot of feel or engagement to be found if you're over-keen to lean into the 'sports' label. Despite the fact there's an actual physical switch to defeat the ESP.

So what about the power?

The VW Group has upped its game on front-drive plug-in hybrids. There's a bigger 19.7kWh battery for longer range, and it can be juiced via a rapid DC post.

We sampled the top-most PHEV. It's a 177bhp 1.5 petrol plus a 116bhp electric motor. The total output isn't the sum of those because they crop up at different rotational speeds, but the all-up peak output is 272bhp across a wide rev range, and 295lb ft at a range of 850-4,750rpm. Those numbers apply in all gears because the motor is upstream of the six-speed DSG transmission.

Anyway, the result is a stout answer to your right foot across wide rev ranges, and pretty decent urban performance even in the electric-only mode. Then the hand-off between electric and petrol-electric power is quiet and free of clonks. In normal driving it actually has most of the smoothness and quietness of an EV.

Unless that is you're in the Cupra drive mode, which pipes in some slightly ridiculous fake noise, boomy and croaky like a wounded water buffalo (we imagine). But that noise disappears when the engine stops, so the car goes from raucous to hushed and back. You can't force it to keep the engine running.

Still, unusually for a PHEV you can put it in sport mode and actually have full control over the gears via paddles. But it still feels pretty strange because the engine will die on the overrun. Because at that point it declutches, you don't have lift-off control over your cornering attitude. Of course that sort of driving is an edge case that few buyers will explore. But if Cupra is calling this a sporty crossover, we felt we needed to test it.

The brake pedal is good, largely avoiding hybrid-typical mush or uncertainty.

Apart from this top-spec PHEV (called eHybrid in Cupra-speak), and a lower-power eHybrid too, Cupra has a range of mild hybrid petrols of 1.5 and 2.0 litres. The 2.0 comes in VZ trim with 265bhp, and that's the only Terramar with all-wheel drive. All versions get DSG transmission.

We haven't yet driven any other Terramars than the eHybrid VZ, but will update this review when we do. Meantime see our tests of those 1.5-litre mild hybrids in the Skoda Kodiaq, VW Tiguan and Passat; cars that are near-identical under the skin.

How about driver assist?

Yeah, it's all there, including adaptive cruise with lane centring, which works in jams too. It also slows you up predictively on approach to roundabouts and junctions and speed limits.

The driver-assist functions can be switched using steering-wheel buttons and menus on the driver's instrument screen rather than the centre screen. A good thing as it doesn't signal to nervous passengers that you're turning off speed or lane warning. Which you might want to do because as with all cars it can get things wrong.