CUPRA RAVAL

Sporty Spaniard introduces us to Volkswagen Group's crucial quartet of all-new electric small hatchbacks

- MATT SAUNDERS

It may have had something of a meteoric rise but, given its commercial success especially, few could now doubt the status of Cupra as a leading Volkswagen Group brand. It looked like an experiment back in 2018 - a punt, even. Now, though, it has very much arrived.

This year, the group has built its millionth Cupra-branded car. After the launches of the Tavascan and Terramar crossovers, year-to-date production volume for 2025 has surpassed 250,000. And Cupra isn't just increasingly commercially successful; it's even being trusted with big strategic product development projects now, doing work on behalf of the whole group.

The Cupra Raval is the proof of that. This is the first of four new supermini-sized EVs to be launched over the next year or so, based on a new, front-motor EV platform called MEB+. The Volkswagen ID Polo and ID Cross and the Skoda Epiq make up the quartet. And as the man on my right - Werner Tietz, executive vice-president for R&D for both Seat and Cupra, and someone whose impressive CV describes big executive jobs at Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Bentley - explains, engineers from the technical centre here at Martorell have done the 'top hat' chassis development for all four cars.

All four will be produced in Spain too, either at Martorell or Volkswagen's Pamplona plant.

The Volkswagens will still feel and drive like Volkswagens, the Skoda like a Skoda. But whether their owners know it or not, there will be more than a little bit of Cupra in all of these cars.

It therefore seems only right that, as far as initial driving impressions go, we start with the Raval. Right now, I have about 40 minutes in a prototype on the mountainous country roads north of Barcelona.