Cupra Formentor

REPORT 2 £48,045 OTR/£48,660 as tested/£596pcm WHY IT’S HERE

Just what is the Cupra Formentor... for?

I’LL START WITH SOME CAVEATS. AS A CAR, I AM VERY MUCH ENJOYING the Cupra Formentor. I like the way it looks, I like the space it has to offer – especially in the back with teenage family members – I like the slightly rambunctious way it drives when you feel like it. But there’s something I’m really struggling with, and that’s the multimedia interface. Very rarely these days do I get infuriated with a car, but I have to say that I’ve come pretty close to losing it with the Formentor’s touchscreen this month. Something that is not, it has to be said, the fault of Cupra as a brand, because I got a VW Golf R in for a bit of a comparison and found it to be equally awful for my blood pressure. The exact issues you can find over on TopGear.com, but generally it centres on a confusing interface that isn’t very intuitive, and an interface that simply isn’t reliable in its responses, be that from the touchscreen or voice control.

Some of the functions are buried in weird places (the reset for the trip computer is in the infotainment library rather than ‘Driving Data’ menus, for instance), and the voice activation is brilliant now and again. But ‘brilliant now and again’ is the death of consistency, and the start of a migraine. Bluntly, if this were my money, it might well be a deal breaker.

It’s a disservice to Cupra, really, because this isn’t a bit of the car it has any choice in. And after a chat with the mother ship, HFF is popping into a dealer for a software update which will – we hope – cure some of the issues. (A fix that is available for all Cupra owners should they feel the need for it.) Let’s hope it does, because this is a great car currently hamstrung by bad user experience. And it just goes to show that the odd knob and button can go a long way to making that experience a little less stressful.