THE BORN IDENTITY(some text hidden)

By Jonathan Crouch

Ten Second Review word count: 42

Fledgling Spanish brand CUPRA offers a surprisingly appealing compact family EV with sporting genes, this car, the Born, here usefully improved. It takes all the clever ingredients of other VW Group EVs, but blends them into a more engaging and characterful confection.

Background word count: 224

It was only a matter of time before we started seeing performance-orientated versions of compact family EVs, but what if you could have one that was, in all its forms, fundamentally developed for enjoyment at the wheel? Yet still as practical, ecological and frugal as its battery-powered rivals. That's the promise of this car, the CUPRA Born. You may by now be vaguely aware of the CUPRA brand. Once it was purely a performance badge on fast SEATs, but now it's a marque in its own right offering two repackaged SEAT models (the CUPRA Ateca and the CUPRA Leon) and one design of its own (the CUPRA Formentor SUV). CUPRA was clear from the start that electrification would play a major part in its product development and, sure enough, the Leon and the Formentor can both be had in Plug-in 'e-Hybrid' forms. The Born though, is a full EV, using the same engineering you'll find in a Volkswagen ID.3 or a Skoda Enyaq, but packaged with a performance twist. You'd think this CUPRA EV model would have had a wider audience with the SEAT branding it was originally supposed to have (initially it was slated to be sold as a SEAT el-Born). But the VW Group has decided instead that this car should be a touch more aspirational than that. Let's check it out.