Having read a lot of posts on the forum before I decided on the cupra and still following some, I thought I should give something back... So here follows my experiences/review of the cupra - 3 weeks after delivery including a drive from Denmark to the south of Spain.
I'll start with why the cupra ended up in the garage. Having lived in Sweden for 10 years (no car taxes) I returned to Denmark to years ago and had to realize that the prospect of 150% car taxes did not really go well with buying a house for the first time. So for two years I settled with mini lease agreements on Peugeot 308 bluehdi's which to be honest weren't exactly doing anything good other than providing extremely cheap transportation. Coming from Sweden and a fully loaded A4 3.0 tdi Quattro avant (tuned to 310hp/610 nm) and before that a c55 amg - both of which I bought a few months old and did 100,000+ km. in I spent night after night looking for a fun, pretty, fast, reliable car that at the same time could accommodate two small children and the wife's suitcases when going south in Europe.
Initially the candidates considered were the R Variant or a slightly used c450 amg. However receiving a quote of EUR 100,000 for the R with a few extras and the C450's retailing for EUR 120,000s (you do not realize the effect of a 150% car tax until you receive a quote and start adding the numbers up) it was simply not possible to justify the hit on the family economy. So I settled on something that would be fun 99% of the time, when I drive alone in the car, and a nightmare for the remaining 1% of the time were it would have to accommodate the four of us: the Ibiza cupra. Or that was until the wife realized I actually intended to go through with it and were in the process of ordering the Ibiza. And for the first time ever she asked me a car related question that I was not able to answer "does Seat not make an Golf r variant equivalent?". It should be noted that Seat is not a big brand in DK and has had a hard time building a brand name here, but never the less we went to the nearest dealer that had a Leon st cupra (there were two in all of DK). And boy were I surprised.
There she was, a new 290 in black, with panorama, dsg, acc, navi high and most of the other stuff except the bucket seats, the sound system and reversing camera. The car was new but we were allowed to take it for a spin after promising not to floor it - and I were sold. Not only was it significantly prittier than the R, it drived better too. And to top it all of we received a quote of EUR 70,000, 30% less than for the golf. It was a no brainer and we left the dealer with the agreement to pickup the car by the end of June and that she would remain locked in the meantime with the only few km done at the transportation and the test drive by me (I believe in the "baby it in" approach).
3 weeks waiting time done and the end of June it was. However I was going for a Ditec treatment and had to leave it for almost two days before I could spend some time behind the wheel (and to the Ditec treatment - yes it is worth it). But I new I was going to spend a lot of time there as we had booked our summer holiday in Marbella, Spain, and had cancelled the rental car when the deal for the Leon was made. As such two weeks passed and 1,050 km of boring running it in through mostly city traffic passed, and the day of the holiday and a 3,200 km drive arrived. For the first 2,600 km of the trip I would be alone as I had two days to get to Madrid were I would pick up the kids and the wife.
The first real sprint of the trip was 160 km highway from Copenhagen to the ferry to Germany. Varying the revs and gradually increasing the speed from 150 km/h, which I kept below for the first 1,000 km, to a few short sessions of 180 km/t, the ferry and German autobahns arrived. Leaving the ferry with a little over 1,200 km on the clock I decided to increase the speed by 10 km/h on the derestricted sessions of autobahn for each 35 km done until full throttle if possible. I was feeling like a four year old kid with unlimited funds in a candy store leaving that ferry. Having done numerous trips through Germany, several times a year for the past 15 years, in as many different cars I was looking forward to test the cupra's potential and experience its long distance capabilities. As much as I expected of the cupra I never expected it to challenge the A4's effortless high speed cruising capabilities, not even mentioning the amg's.
How did it go then? First of all the impossible happened, I had a night through Germany with almost no traffic and good weather! Which meant I had several possibilities to explore the top-end of the cupra and the ever so loved limiter at 272 km/h indicated. My first impression in the 200+ km/h range was the impressing lack of wind noise, which came much to my surprise. Surely there are some road noise but that is varying greatly with the surface of the road. The second was the stability and effortless way of gathering speed. As much as I did not expect the cupra to challenge the a4 and the amg in this area, it totally below them aside. Near Frankfurt a no-lift-off session of 35 km and 272 km/h came with extreme confidence. It's just soo planted and the way it gets there has to be experienced. With the engine mode in comfort it just gathers speed without any fuss and suddenly you are at the limiter. The only thing I would wish for in this area was a slightly bigger tank, 60 or 70 liters would do so much better than 50....I managed to empty one of the tanks in less than 300 km averaging 197 km/h. Waiting for the turbo to cool down for a few minutes before turning it off and entering the station to pay, I really missed the 500 km range of the a4.
At 4.45 in the morning I pulled over in a small city in northern France, having covered a little over 1,400 km in one go, with the 45 minutes ferry trip to Germany and refueling as the only stops on the way. Tired (which the tiredness recognition system coincidently told me I was as I pulled of the highway), surprised and extremely happy. How they have managed to make a car this good at that price range I could not and still do not comprehend.
A few hours of sleep and I had to admit that the cupra seats are not among the most comfortable beds I have experienced... Nothing a freshly baked croissant and an espresso could not fix though.
Clocking 600 km that day I found a hotel just across the boarder to Spain and went to bed wondering if this could by any means be the best of all the cars I have owned. No it did not have the sound of the amg's v8, especially not when starting from a could were the amg would let the neighborhood now that I was leaving. But it was not bad and the fuel range considerably better. However the range of the a4 was way better, but the stability, sound and thrill of driving the cupra was on the contrary in another league compared to the a4. Some back roads/mountain roads would have to be the judge of that.
The next couple of days went with covering the last bit to Madrid, picking up the family, a 600 km drive down south and a few days of settling in, before I could argue for a sightseeing trip to a city up in the mountains, allowing me to explore the cupra on mountain roads - much to the joy of our 5 year old son and not so much the blonde.. It actually made her feel sick which have never happened before, not going sideways in the amg nor in the a4 or any other car for that matter, which only transcends to the ridicules speeds that you are able to hold up in the cupra under these circumstances. Not knowing the road and handling the cupra for the first time on roads like this I did not go anyway near the limit, but working the magics of the diff (which takes some getting used to as it goes against all logic and experience from other cars) it simply carries speed and pull g's at a level that are more or less insane.
A little over 3 weeks have passed now since I picked up the car and it has almost covered 5,000 km by now, of which it did 3,600 km in 3 days. In a weeks time the journey north begins and in two weeks time it will have covered 9,000 km, arriving back home in Denmark with what have turned out to be the most diverse and by far the best car I have owned so far.
I have no doubt the journey home will be effortless and fun - hopefully a local Seat will have time to do an oil change before we leave so the the running in debris can be flushed out. Which brings me on to the point of oil usage. As I mentioned in the beginning I believe in the "baby it in" method and followed the manuals descriptions, closely monitoring engine speed and boost pressure (I minutes did not exceed 1,5 bar the first 500 km and only allowed it to reach 1,7 bar a few times up until 1,000 km from were on it increased along with the speed). So how much oil has it used in the 5,000 km covered? About 2-3 mm on the oil pin compared to the level first read at 200 km. And it have not moved a bit since the "sleepover" in France at approximately 2,500 km..
I'll start with why the cupra ended up in the garage. Having lived in Sweden for 10 years (no car taxes) I returned to Denmark to years ago and had to realize that the prospect of 150% car taxes did not really go well with buying a house for the first time. So for two years I settled with mini lease agreements on Peugeot 308 bluehdi's which to be honest weren't exactly doing anything good other than providing extremely cheap transportation. Coming from Sweden and a fully loaded A4 3.0 tdi Quattro avant (tuned to 310hp/610 nm) and before that a c55 amg - both of which I bought a few months old and did 100,000+ km. in I spent night after night looking for a fun, pretty, fast, reliable car that at the same time could accommodate two small children and the wife's suitcases when going south in Europe.
Initially the candidates considered were the R Variant or a slightly used c450 amg. However receiving a quote of EUR 100,000 for the R with a few extras and the C450's retailing for EUR 120,000s (you do not realize the effect of a 150% car tax until you receive a quote and start adding the numbers up) it was simply not possible to justify the hit on the family economy. So I settled on something that would be fun 99% of the time, when I drive alone in the car, and a nightmare for the remaining 1% of the time were it would have to accommodate the four of us: the Ibiza cupra. Or that was until the wife realized I actually intended to go through with it and were in the process of ordering the Ibiza. And for the first time ever she asked me a car related question that I was not able to answer "does Seat not make an Golf r variant equivalent?". It should be noted that Seat is not a big brand in DK and has had a hard time building a brand name here, but never the less we went to the nearest dealer that had a Leon st cupra (there were two in all of DK). And boy were I surprised.
There she was, a new 290 in black, with panorama, dsg, acc, navi high and most of the other stuff except the bucket seats, the sound system and reversing camera. The car was new but we were allowed to take it for a spin after promising not to floor it - and I were sold. Not only was it significantly prittier than the R, it drived better too. And to top it all of we received a quote of EUR 70,000, 30% less than for the golf. It was a no brainer and we left the dealer with the agreement to pickup the car by the end of June and that she would remain locked in the meantime with the only few km done at the transportation and the test drive by me (I believe in the "baby it in" approach).
3 weeks waiting time done and the end of June it was. However I was going for a Ditec treatment and had to leave it for almost two days before I could spend some time behind the wheel (and to the Ditec treatment - yes it is worth it). But I new I was going to spend a lot of time there as we had booked our summer holiday in Marbella, Spain, and had cancelled the rental car when the deal for the Leon was made. As such two weeks passed and 1,050 km of boring running it in through mostly city traffic passed, and the day of the holiday and a 3,200 km drive arrived. For the first 2,600 km of the trip I would be alone as I had two days to get to Madrid were I would pick up the kids and the wife.
The first real sprint of the trip was 160 km highway from Copenhagen to the ferry to Germany. Varying the revs and gradually increasing the speed from 150 km/h, which I kept below for the first 1,000 km, to a few short sessions of 180 km/t, the ferry and German autobahns arrived. Leaving the ferry with a little over 1,200 km on the clock I decided to increase the speed by 10 km/h on the derestricted sessions of autobahn for each 35 km done until full throttle if possible. I was feeling like a four year old kid with unlimited funds in a candy store leaving that ferry. Having done numerous trips through Germany, several times a year for the past 15 years, in as many different cars I was looking forward to test the cupra's potential and experience its long distance capabilities. As much as I expected of the cupra I never expected it to challenge the A4's effortless high speed cruising capabilities, not even mentioning the amg's.
How did it go then? First of all the impossible happened, I had a night through Germany with almost no traffic and good weather! Which meant I had several possibilities to explore the top-end of the cupra and the ever so loved limiter at 272 km/h indicated. My first impression in the 200+ km/h range was the impressing lack of wind noise, which came much to my surprise. Surely there are some road noise but that is varying greatly with the surface of the road. The second was the stability and effortless way of gathering speed. As much as I did not expect the cupra to challenge the a4 and the amg in this area, it totally below them aside. Near Frankfurt a no-lift-off session of 35 km and 272 km/h came with extreme confidence. It's just soo planted and the way it gets there has to be experienced. With the engine mode in comfort it just gathers speed without any fuss and suddenly you are at the limiter. The only thing I would wish for in this area was a slightly bigger tank, 60 or 70 liters would do so much better than 50....I managed to empty one of the tanks in less than 300 km averaging 197 km/h. Waiting for the turbo to cool down for a few minutes before turning it off and entering the station to pay, I really missed the 500 km range of the a4.
At 4.45 in the morning I pulled over in a small city in northern France, having covered a little over 1,400 km in one go, with the 45 minutes ferry trip to Germany and refueling as the only stops on the way. Tired (which the tiredness recognition system coincidently told me I was as I pulled of the highway), surprised and extremely happy. How they have managed to make a car this good at that price range I could not and still do not comprehend.
A few hours of sleep and I had to admit that the cupra seats are not among the most comfortable beds I have experienced... Nothing a freshly baked croissant and an espresso could not fix though.
Clocking 600 km that day I found a hotel just across the boarder to Spain and went to bed wondering if this could by any means be the best of all the cars I have owned. No it did not have the sound of the amg's v8, especially not when starting from a could were the amg would let the neighborhood now that I was leaving. But it was not bad and the fuel range considerably better. However the range of the a4 was way better, but the stability, sound and thrill of driving the cupra was on the contrary in another league compared to the a4. Some back roads/mountain roads would have to be the judge of that.
The next couple of days went with covering the last bit to Madrid, picking up the family, a 600 km drive down south and a few days of settling in, before I could argue for a sightseeing trip to a city up in the mountains, allowing me to explore the cupra on mountain roads - much to the joy of our 5 year old son and not so much the blonde.. It actually made her feel sick which have never happened before, not going sideways in the amg nor in the a4 or any other car for that matter, which only transcends to the ridicules speeds that you are able to hold up in the cupra under these circumstances. Not knowing the road and handling the cupra for the first time on roads like this I did not go anyway near the limit, but working the magics of the diff (which takes some getting used to as it goes against all logic and experience from other cars) it simply carries speed and pull g's at a level that are more or less insane.
A little over 3 weeks have passed now since I picked up the car and it has almost covered 5,000 km by now, of which it did 3,600 km in 3 days. In a weeks time the journey north begins and in two weeks time it will have covered 9,000 km, arriving back home in Denmark with what have turned out to be the most diverse and by far the best car I have owned so far.
I have no doubt the journey home will be effortless and fun - hopefully a local Seat will have time to do an oil change before we leave so the the running in debris can be flushed out. Which brings me on to the point of oil usage. As I mentioned in the beginning I believe in the "baby it in" method and followed the manuals descriptions, closely monitoring engine speed and boost pressure (I minutes did not exceed 1,5 bar the first 500 km and only allowed it to reach 1,7 bar a few times up until 1,000 km from were on it increased along with the speed). So how much oil has it used in the 5,000 km covered? About 2-3 mm on the oil pin compared to the level first read at 200 km. And it have not moved a bit since the "sleepover" in France at approximately 2,500 km..
