While SEAT might move on to new adventures, its Cupra spinoff is doing very well, and this is another bet that its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, has won.
The Spanish sporty and electrified automaker already has multiple vehicles under its belt and more in the making. One of them will be the Tavascan, a reinterpretation of the Volkswagen ID.5 (and ID.4), which will be joined by the Terramar, which is Cupra's take on Europe's latest-generation Volkswagen Tiguan.
You may remember it from the eponymous concept unveiled in 2022, though rumors of it date back to 2018. As a result, Cupra took a lot of time developing it, and it's taking a bit more as the model has yet to hit the assembly line. In fact, it will probably do so later this year, and in the meantime, our spy photographers have nabbed another prototype, which was fully undisguised.
These are Cupra Terramar’s most revealing spy shots, which were taken somewhere in sunny Spain, where our man with the cam spotted this pre-production tester sitting in a parking lot. However, for some reason, our spy photographer only took two shots of it, from the front and rear, revealing a slightly more toned-down design than the study, with revised lighting units and bumpers and a few other tweaks.
Photo: SH Proshots
The Terramar is around four and a half meters long, which comes out to 177 inches, so it measures about the same as Europe's latest VW Tiguan from bumper to bumper. Like its German cousin, it is expected to offer seating for five, and since it is based on the same underpinnings, otherwise shared with numerous VW Group models, including the Formentor, Q6, Kodiaq, Atlas/ Golf, and so on, it should feature a similar (if not identical) powertrain family.
As a result, we expect Cupra's upcoming mid-size crossover to pack a collection of 1.5- and 2.0-liter engines. Some of them will sport mild-hybrid assistance, at least one (or maybe two) will be a plug-in hybrid, and customers who choose lesser variants will make do with front-wheel drive, but an all-wheel drive system will be available on upper specs, albeit only with certain mills.
Cupra might unveil the Terramar sooner than we expected, as the latest reports speak about the upcoming model celebrating its worldwide debut as early as next month (August 2024). This model will be put together in Hungary on the same assembly line as the Formentor and Audi Q3, all of which utilize the same platform, and chances are it won't end up in our market.
If you forgot, Cupra states it will launch in the New World by the end of the decade, and its model of choice is a next-gen zero-emission Formentor, which will be assembled locally.
After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s. Full profile
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