Cupra’s Dark Rebel sports car is motor to take brand to the next level

CUPRA is good at flaunting future metal.

But this time there’s a virtual twist.

5

5

5

We’ve already seen Urban Rebel, a small electric crossover coming in 2025.

We like.

But what’s got us really excited is Dark Rebel, a fully-fledged sports car due two years after that.

It is exactly the halo car the surging Spanish brand needs to truly go global.

Cupra is only five years old – a sporty offshoot of the now seemingly semi-retired Seat – but it has harnessed the inevitable EV charge to become the darling of the VW Group.

It has shifted an impressive 300,000 space-invader-badged cars to date, half of which were sold in the last year. This year will be even better.

Brit Wayne Griffiths, Cupra CEO, said Dark Rebel was the “ultimate interpretation” of the spicy brand’s future-focused vision.

Punters, or the “Cupra Tribe”, as bosses like to call them, can now personalise theirs on the “Hyper Configurator” lodged somewhere, if you can find it, in Cupra’s collaborative corner of the metaverse.

What won’t change, however, even after the kids get their virtual mitts on it, is that epically proportioned bonnet, triangular headlamps, shooting brake-style cabin, and the unique central spine element that visually links it tip to tail.

Porsche, look out.

Back in the real world, Cupra also revealed something we can reliably expect on the roads next year.

And that’s Tavascan – named after, for no apparent reason, a tiny village in northern Spain, which I’ll wager has no public electric car chargers.

Sharing its VW family underpinnings with the ID4 and Skoda Enyaq, it’s a 100 per cent electric SUV coupe and will be built in China.

True to form, it is very similar to the original concept revealed in 2019, right down to the futuristic interior that features another central spine – definitely a theme emerging here – and more copper-coloured metallic surfaces on the dash and doors than any other Cupra before it.

There will be two powertrains: 286hp single-motor and a 340hp dual-motor AWD. The maximum range is 341 miles. Decent.

Expect Dark Rebel to be next-level.

5

5