MODEL ON TEST: VZ2 1.5 e-HYBRID DSG AUTOMATIC – MILEAGE – 4,005

There’s a members-only club for people who have Cupra Terramars on a certain social media platform and I’ve asked to join it. I thought it might be enlightening, but I had a sneak preview, pending approval, and I’m getting the feeling that this is a club for exceptionally boring people.

You know the sort: they’re the ones who swan into a showroom, often with their own money – the cheek
of them – and buy a car which they then drive about in, with nothing ever going wrong. Their lives and their cars are perfect, and they’re drawn to the Terramar because it looks pretty sharp, but is, under the skin, just another VW that will never, judging by their posts, give you the excitement of refusing to start up, spluttering to a sudden death on a smart motorway or bursting into flames in the middle of the night for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever. Consumer journalists looking for a scandal will find little to excite their keyboards here, I have already concluded. But there again, I now realise that this is an owners’ club which, like it or not, suits me perfectly well, seeing as my life with the Terramar is, I am a bit disappointed to say, pretty much uneventful.

Actually, there was some drama this month. And it’s something that only happens when I try to get out
of our driveway. Reverse sensors on this car are hardwired to the software equivalent of a startled hen. So if the wind blows and nary so much as a frond of greenery looks at the back of the car, the system kicks in and smashes you back into the seat. It happened twice this month, plus there’s a massive red warning flash that emblazons the main binnacle if you’re driving along at the breakneck speed of, let’s say, 27mph and are, by the wildest interpretation of geometry, anywhere near the trajectory of a parked car.This has me screaming at the dashboard,“I know! Yes, I DID see that, but thanks for the whiplash.”

This is all painfully too familiar from my earlier assays in the Cupra’s cousin brand, Skoda, while, even among these self-satisfied owners on social media (let’s call them the Terramati), there are rumblings of the need to pressure Cupra’s labs to dial down the anti- crash radar.

Where me and all the other Terramar drivers seem to heartily agree, however, is on this car’s aesthetic clout. Unknowingly or not, we’re all fans of Jorge Diez, the man who sculpted this dynamic cracker out of a big lump of corporate marketing directive.As the possessor of not only a fine black polar neck jumper, he’s also the man whose hands fettled the second-generation Audi TT, not to mention the mighty Audi A7. He even did a bit of conceptual work for Lamborghini and Ducati. Is this the kind of insight that might impress the owners’ club, I wonder? If they let me in, I’ll tell them and report back.

SIMON HACKER

WHAT’S HOT: Relative rarity: we observe an increasing cornucopia of Cupras out there, but the Terramar is an unusual spot – and we all like driving something different.

WHAT’S NOT: The push-click cover on the charge port doesn’t always secure in one easy motion. It’s the roadgoing equivalent of driving off with your flies undone.

CLICK HERE TO READ OUR LONG-TERM REPORTS ON THE CUPRA TERRAMAR

FACTS & FIGURES

ARRIVED: 10th February 2026

PRICE WHEN NEW: £50,150

PRICE AS TESTED: £51,145

ECONOMY: 156.9mpg (official WLTP) 41.7mpg (on test) 

COSTS: None

FAULTS: None