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CUPRA Born VZ First Edition (326PS) Video Review 

Syphon
CUPRA Born VZ with a man pointing at the bonnet

What is it?

Here we have CUPRA’s brand new Born VZ First edition. This is the top-spec model. It’s fast. 326 PS, 545 pounds of torque. That’s 75% more torque than the previous version of the Born, the non-VZ edition. This car is really fun to drive, but we’ll get onto that later.

This car costs £47,165. It is costly. You pay the premium for electric vehicles. And is it worth that to you? Well, I’ll let you decide by the end.

Verdict

What a blast of a car. Handles well and goes like stink. What the Born should have been when it first launched. Only the brakes and lack of visual difference over the lesser Borns let it down. Oh and it’s a bit too expensive.

Our rating

4.5 stars out of 5

What we didn’t like

  • Uninspiring brakes at times
  • Buggy HUD display
  • Price

Video review

CUPRA Born VZ Video review

Exterior

This car is in an exclusive green colour. It’s called Dark Forest. I wouldn’t personally buy a green car. But a lot of people have said, actually, they really like the colour when they see the car. I don’t know how well it’s going to come across in the video and pictures, but it has grey and green hues and does look great in person.

Visually, the car isn’t very different from the non-VZ versions. This is the VZ “first edition”, which costs even more than the VZ version and comes with some extras.

What you get with this edition is the panoramic sunroof. You get the 360-degree cameras and a heat pump.

The heat pump increases the efficiency of the car. It reuses heat from the battery, puts that back into the car’s cooling, and increases the range.

So, the most significant and only noticeable exterior change to the car is the wheels. They’re 20-inches. I think the wheels look good. I think tyres are going to be quite expensive to replace. But that’s the price you pay for style.

The back of the car is mainly unchanged, the only difference being the VZ badge, which indicates it’s the VZ model. You’ve got the same design as the other versions; you’ve got the CUPRA badge, which is how you open the boot.

That is going to change when we see the facelift of the Born. The integrated CUPRA logo will be in the light strip, as seen on the new Leon and Formentor, Terramar and Taviscan.

The diffuser sits along the bottom in body colour.

The only thing about the back is that I read on the forum someone described it as looking a bit egg-shaped, and now I’ve read that I can’t unsee it!

It’s the only external view of the car that lets it down slightly visually for me. It does look sporty all around, but now I’ve read about it and thought, “Oh yeah, it does look a bit kind of dumpy”. That’s stuck with me. It’s not bad, but hopefully, CUPRA can do something with that on the facelift.

Interior

The doors are of decent enough quality as you open them. You’ve some hard plastic and a soft suede-like material for resting your arm on, which is quite comfortable. You’ve got your controls for the mirrors, which are all right. They feel a little bit flimsy, but they work. At least they’re not touch buttons; you also have your controls for the windows here.

And you’ve got quite a deep door bin. There’s plenty of space for storing things.

CUPRA, I don’t know why you don’t put some felt at the bottom like Skoda does to give it that slightly improved premium feel, especially for this car’s price.

Sadly, the control panel for the lights uses touch buttons (the same as the other Borns). Generally, you don’t need to touch them because you’ve got auto lights. If you want to turn on your fog lights, however, you would need to use them, and they are ok to use; I would prefer actual physical buttons here, though.

The steering wheel, unfortunately, has capacitive buttons, which I triggered by accident a few times. In particular, the volume controls for the stereo.

Luckily, CUPRA has kept physical buttons on the new facelift for Formentor and Leon. Hopefully, the facelift CUPRA Born will get physical buttons back because, generally, these things are pretty frustrating.

The bucket seats are my favourite part of the car.

I know I said that on the Formentor and Cupra Leon review, but they’re the same seats and are really good. Comfortable and striking visually as well. And they’ve got this clever mode you can turn on in the settings so that when you are about to get in, it moves the seat back ready for you to get in because there’s quite a high bolster on the sides.

And as you shut the door, put your foot on the brake. The seats move back to your driving position, which is clever. It makes getting in and out of the car a lot easier.

It took me a while to get them adjusted to the right setting. There are so many different options. You’ve got lumbar, height, tilt, distance etc. I found myself a bit uncomfortable at first on a reasonably long drive. And I was worried because I’d read another review about that.

However, I managed to set up the seats optimally, and they have three memory settings. So, if you’re sharing the car with a partner, they can have their settings back with the touch of a button. I think it’s worth getting them set just right for you, and for me, it took a couple of days of different driving conditions.

You also get the Sennheiser audio system, which is also really good. I won’t be able to show you the effect of that, obviously, in the review, but needless to say, it sounds all-encompassing. The volume goes quite loud without distorting the speakers as well.

The infotainment screen has the new software, which has improved over the previous version. It’s been OK to use. Things are a bit more accessible.

You’ve got a swipe-down menu where you can turn off the annoying speed warning. Of course, I don’t speed, but sometimes the camera gets it wrong, warning you that you’re going too fast when you aren’t.

If I sit in the back with the front seat set for my driving position. (I’m 5′ 10″). I’ve got plenty of room, head and leg room. Now. In electric cars, generally, the floor is higher because of the batteries in the base of the vehicle. So, my knees were raised a bit and off the seat below my knees.

There’s not much you can do about that, but it’s still comfortable.

In the back, they’ve skimped a bit in terms of quality. You don’t have the same velvety armrest you get in the front of the car. The back is no different from the other Borns.

You don’t have independent climate control for passengers in the back, which is disappointing, but you still have the two USB-C charging points.

The boot is manually opened. There is no electric opening boot, which is a shame considering the price of the car. Hopefully, we’ll see that on the facelift model when it comes.

The boot size is exactly the same as the other Born models. You’ve got your charging kit included, which there is no space for under the floor panel. This means it’s just a little bit compromised unless you have plenty of charge and you don’t want to take it with you, but that’s a bit of a faff to take it in and out like that.

In a panel just below the boot opening, you’ve got the tyre refilling kit, locking wheel nut and the other usual accessories.

The boot size is fine. I’ve managed to get an entire week’s worth of shopping in there with space to spare.

On the road

So, driving. What a difference. This car feels great. I’d read some other reviews, and I was looking forward to getting in this car, and I haven’t been disappointed. It’s such a difference over the other Born editions. 326 PS, you can feel it; it is fast. And being all-electric, that power is instant. There are no gear changes; it just flies.

The minute you put your foot down, it pulls. And that is quite addictive. There’s no hesitation whatsoever. It does run out of steam a bit when you get up to, well, I can’t say, higher revs, but at higher speeds, it loses it a little bit.

They say 300 is all the power you need in a car, the sweet spot. But 326. I’ll take that. That’s fine with me. The torque increase of over 75% from the other Born’s is pretty ridiculous. This is hilarious to drive. I’ve got an Ibiza CUPRA, which still feels like a go-kart. This isn’t far off it mind you. It’s much heavier and has the batteries to contend with, but it is a hoot to drive.

I really would happily have one of these cars. Of course, it’s a rear wheel drive car. So, around corners, you get this push, which is very addictive.

So handling is good. Power is good. The brakes are the one area where I think it’s a bit weak.

They don’t quite have the grunt I’d expect them to have for a car of this power and weight. You’ve got a reasonably heavy car here, but they don’t bite enough for me. They don’t give you the confidence that you want.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re good, but they’re not quite there in terms of giving me the assurance and confidence that when I slam on the brakes, and I did have to do an emergency stop during the review, the car was still going longer than I’d have liked and wanted it to stop sooner.

The car has paddle shifters, which frankly seem a bit silly. They adjust how much regenerative breaking the vehicle has. This only works in CUPRA mode as well. I pulled the paddles for a while and wondered what they were for, as nothing appeared to be happening.

I’m glad that you can control the braking settings without having to go into the menu on the infotainment, but the paddles feel like they are there, just well, because it’s cool to have paddles. Paddles are for shifting gears, which the car doesn’t have. At least on the Ioniq N, it simulates gear changes, so they have more purpose.

Visibility of the instrument panels and everything is clear whilst driving. Nothing is obstructing the small central screen.

We need to talk about the HUD (Head-up-display). Now, I did notice some bugs on the head-up display,

A couple of days into having the car, the brightness setting on the HUD set itself to the lowest, so I could hardly see it.

I hadn’t touched it. I entered the settings and moved the brightness slider, but nothing happened. I turned the car off and on again, but there was nothing. Still dim. This persisted for about 48 hours until the car returned to full brightness without me changing anything.

The second bug, which is a bit more of a problem, is the sat nav. So I was using Android Auto Waze.

So it gives you an early heads-up linked to your sat nav on the HUD, whether you’re turning left or right with some arrows projected onto the screen. Unfortunately, for some reason, best known to the car, it decided whenever I was meant to be turning right, the arrow pointed left. Consistently.

I don’t know if it’s an Android Auto bug or a bug with a car. I’m going to blame the car. (Sorry, CUPRA). Maybe let us know in the comments if you’ve had the same issue with your Born.

Other than that, it was okay.

The range of the car is 372, well up to 372 miles; obviously, how you drive it, and the temperature and all those other things will depend on whether you see that range.

I’ve drove 99 per cent of the time in Cupra mode because it’s the most fun. I’ve had a reasonably heavy foot, but I haven’t been watching the battery and worrying that it’s depleting before my eyes.

It feels similar to my car, my Ibiza in terms of petrol usage or fuel usage and they’ve definitely improved the range on this. I haven’t had range anxiety.

I haven’t gone on a long journey, to be fair, but I’m confident that this is plenty for most people.

Summary

So, overall, I think CUPRA has done a great job with this car. I like it. It’s a hoot to drive, uh, for a performance electric vehicle; it’s fun, really fun. As I said, the brakes could do with a bit more bite.

The power is plenty. The handling is significantly improved over the other Bourns. There are some software bugs that need to be fixed, but overall, I think CUPRA definitely have done a really good job with this one.

I’m interested to see what comes with the facelift version of the VZ, which is probably going to be, I’d guess, two to three years away, maybe four years as the final run out.

Maybe we’ll see a little bit more power. Maybe they can push it to 380, which would be fun, or even 400.

They definitely would need to upgrade the brakes for that. I’m just speculating here; we don’t have any information on that, but we will be sure to tell you when we do.

But back to this car, CUPRA has done a bloody good job. It’s just a shame it’s so expensive.

Car spec as tested

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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