ROUTE MASTER
The new Cupra Ateca is a car for all roads and all reasons. Dan Prosser heads to Barcelona to drive it
Time isn’t so much against us today as threatening to become our worst enemy. We have just a single day with the brand new Cupra Ateca and an intimidatingly long list of things to get done. Thankfully, the location at least is looking like it’s on our side. Having boarded the morning’s first flight out of Heathrow we were in the sky even before the sun, meaning we touched down in Barcelona not much after 9am. Even at this time of day – and towards the end of September, no less – the temperature is warm enough to make us long for one of the nearby Mediterranean beaches, but we have an intriguing new car to explore and very limited time in which to do so.
In just 12 hours we will complete our own circuit of Spain’s eastern tip before returning the Cupra Ateca to central Barcelona and then retiring to bed. In that time we must get beneath the skin of the car and learn everything we can about this newly independent brand, while also photographing the Ateca for this article.
There is plenty to do, then, but with the busy streets of one of Europe’s coolest and most beautiful cities only a short drive from here, plus free-flowing highways that will lead us in short order to some of the most breathtaking mountain passes anywhere on the continent, we do at least have the roads we need to get the job done. If you really want to understand a new car you must drive it in a number of different environments and, what’s more, you must drive it in context.
And context for the Cupra Ateca means a little bit of everything. This, after all, is a car that will be driven on a daily basis not only in town and on motorways but also on the kind of remote, twisting mountain roads that invite you to take control of the gears yourself. From Barcelona’s El Prat airport, where the handsome Magnetic Grey Cupra Ateca is waiting for us, we can find it all.
Barcelona has the added benefit of being Cupra’s home city. In fact, as I jump into the Ateca’s driving seat for the first time and carefully slip away from the cut and thrust of the airport surrounds, I calculate that this car was designed, engineered and even manufactured no more than 20 miles away at Seat’s enormous Martorell facility.
We aren’t heading for Martorell now, but Barcelona’s Port Olímpic, so named because it hosted the sailing events for the 1992 Olympic Games. Parked in the shadow of Frank Gehry’s iconic El Peix, a 52-metre-long golden fish sculpture that dominates this part of the seafront, the Ateca appears sharp-suited and purposeful. Dozens of bushy-tailed joggers
THIS CAR WILL BE DRIVEN NOT ONLY IN TOWN AND ON MOTORWAYS BUT ALSO ON TWISTING MOUNTAIN ROADS
and a number of rather less energetic tourists break their strides to get a closer look.
On nearby city streets the Ateca is lithe and wieldy. It feels compact and easy to thread through traffic that gives no quarter, but somehow the cabin offers bundles of space. Meanwhile, its lofty seating position affords you a commanding view of the road ahead. Little wonder that mid-sized SUVS have become so popular. Its taller ride height also means the Ateca has plenty of wheel travel, so even the biggest bumps and the most sunken drain covers that we happen upon around Port Olímpic present no real challenge to the car’s suspension. In the city, then, the Ateca rides with maturity and composure.
The adaptive dampers that will be fitted as standard to all Cupra Atecas certainly play their part. Compared to its Seat stablemate the Cupra sits 20mm closer to the road, lowering the car’s centre of gravity and dialling in more agility and handling precision with it. The dampers and spring rates are specially tuned, while the 19in wheels are wrapped in grippy Pirelli P Zero tyres. On top of that, the car’s intelligent four-wheel-drive system continuously analyses a number of factors, such as road speed, wheel speed, road condition, throttle position and much more besides, to shuffle torque between the four wheels, meaning the Cupra Ateca is as rich in traction and stability as it is performance.
And it is performance, of course, that underpins not only this particular car but also the entire Cupra brand. It is also the
IT THAT DEMONSTRATES CUPRA’S UNDERSTANDING OF PERFORMANCE IS IN LINE WITH OUR OWN
reason we’re leaving the hectic environs of Barcelona for the hills to the north of the city, where we’ll be able to dig a little deeper into the car’s accelerative capability and exercise its 296bhp more fully. That power – which, along with 295lb ft of torque, comes courtesy of a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine – clearly demonstrates that Cupra’s understanding of performance is very much in line with Autocar’s own.
The gearbox is a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic which offers gearshifts so rapid in ‘manual’ mode that you would need the skill and dexterity of a ninja to get anywhere close with a conventional H-pattern manual transmission. The powerful engine, quickshifting gearbox and four-wheel-drive system slingshot the Ateca to 62mph in 5.4sec, and the car will not stop accelerating until it reaches 152mph.
From Port Olímpic we head north-west away from the city, picking up the autopista that runs directly past the Ateca’s birthplace, the factory at Martorell. Rather than stopping for a home visit we push on a little farther and soon enough we turn onto a tighter road. It meanders through low-lying hills, tracking Riera de Marganell, a tributary that feeds into the muddy El Llobregat river, for several miles. The road’s two lanes are clearly defined but very narrow and so littered with twists and turns that I drive no more spiritedly than I have done all morning. Instead, we sweep our way through the road’s endless curves as though we have all the time in the world. It isn’t long before we reach the end of the road at a T-junction and find ourselves with a decision to make. Turning left will take
us towards the jagged peaks of Montserrat where there are some stunning driving roads. We’d be upon them in a matter of minutes, too, but turning left feels like the easy option. Rolling the dice, and choosing to forget about the time pressure for a moment, we turn right.
A two-lane freeway carries us 30 miles due north to the small town of Berga, whereupon our gamble begins to pay dividends. We are closer now to the out-of-season ski slopes of Andorra than the beaches of Barcelona. Now we’re in the expansive foothills of the Pyrenees mountain range, so the roads are wider and more clearly sighted but still wonderfully and relentlessly twisty. We settle on a stretch of asphalt close to Pantà de la Llosa del Cavall, a man-made reservoir that is dammed at its southern tip. The dam was constructed 20 years ago and the enormous reservoir that was formed behind its 122-metre height required only a single farmhouse to be evacuated.
From the summit of our chosen road, 1480 metres above sea level, the surrounding valley is at once rugged and verdant; somehow both rocky and green. Following the road downhill through its countless bends and secondgear switchbacks we find the village of Sant Llorenç de Morunys, which we drive through without stopping before catching our first glimpse of the reservoir. It is so spectacularly turquoise in the bright sunshine that you would swear it is filled not with water but some sort of rum cocktail.
Pantà de la Llosa del Cavall and the hillsides around it make for a breathtaking backdrop for the Cupra Ateca. Once photographer Stuart Price has had his fill I steal away in the Ateca and begin to drive it with a touch more enthusiasm. These roads demand the kind of agility and steering response that you seldom find in an SUV, but with the Cupra driving mode engaged the car immediately becomes taut and nimble. There is enough outright grip, body control and roll resistance that you can actually drive it with the same vim and vigour that you would a hot hatch. The engine, meanwhile, is effortlessly strong, and it has sharp throttle response and a lively top end. Mated to the rapid-fire dual-clutch transmission, it gives the Cupra Ateca more performance than a typical onlooker would ever credit.
Like so many of the more remote roads in Spain, the one that meanders around the reservoir is characterised as much by its beautifully smooth surface as by its flowing curves. To somebody more accustomed to Britain’s strangely lumpen and broken road network, it’s a real treat. It is on this road that I spot a gap in the crash barrier, then a rocky track that seems to drop down to the edge of the reservoir. Tentatively, I
YOU CAN DRIVE THE CUPRA ATECA WITH THE SAME VIM AND VIGOUR THAT YOU WOULD A HOT HATCH
point the Ateca’s nose at the track, select Off-road mode and allow the car to take control of our speed as we descend the short, sharp slope towards the water’s edge. Sitting higher than a conventional hatchback, the Ateca has good ground clearance, so at no point does the underside scrape against the rocks beneath. I continue until the car’s tyres are just a few inches away from getting wet, then drink in the arresting view: radiant blue-green water in the foreground, rockyyet-verdant peaks towering above it and a bright blue sky peering down on everything.
I could spend the rest of the day right here, but with the sun now on its journey down towards the horizon and more photography still to be done, I climb back aboard and rejoin Stuart. As he snaps away in the soft, golden light I take a moment to admire not the scenery around me but the car immediately in front. Sitting closer to the road on those 19in wheels the Ateca looks purposeful and hunkered-down. Its quad exhaust pipes and chunky Brembo brakes hint at the power that lurks beneath the bonnet, while the black detailing around the grille is bold and confident, if not downright sinister. Finished distinctively in copper, the Cupra badges front and rear look like jewellery.
Before long the sun drops behind one of the peaks over to the west and the light fades to near enough total darkness. With 60 miles of autopista between us and our hotel back in Barcelona I have plenty of time to ponder the Cupra Ateca and, more pertinently still, Cupra itself. By driving the car in town, on multi-lane highways and up in the mountains – by driving it in context, in other words – I feel as though I’ve peeled away its many layers and come to know it well, as though I’ve been its custodian not for 12 hours but for 12 weeks. Certainly, this is a car that needs to be driven in a number of different environments before you can really appreciate the breadth of its usability.
And what does it tell us about the newly independent Cupra? That while its cars are built with performance in mind, they will not be so uncompromising in its pursuit that to use one every day would be punishing. The Ateca tells us, too, that forthcoming Cupras will have the distinctive, eye-catching styling and the sense of exclusivity that a more exacting sort of buyer will expect.
We navigate our way through Barcelona’s brightly lit streets, still busy despite the late hour, until we find our hotel. There, we hand the Ateca back to its keeper and I watch it drive away. The car may be leaving but Cupra has well and truly arrived.
SITTING CLOSER TO THE ROAD ON ITS 19IN WHEELS, THE ATECA LOOKS PURPOSEFUL AND HUNKERED-DOWN