The Cupra Ateca is a car that could well be the answer to all your automotive wants and needs. So long as you have quite specific wants and needs that is. It combines practicality with a frankly ridiculous amount of performance, suggesting that becoming a family need not spell an end to your days of fun behind the wheel. Tom Webster has spent a few months seeing if his young family warm to the hot SUV.

Update 1: The tasty, beautiful cake

Despite the best efforts of politicians desperate for constituents’ votes, it is generally accepted that one can’t have one’s cake and eat it.

Before you wonder where I’m heading with my latest tortured analogy, I present to you the Cupra Ateca I am living with – a fine example of a car that seems to promise that you can have a bit of everything you like, all at once.

It is simultaneously a sensible, practical family car with a spacious boot and lots of family friendly touches and a riotous performance vehicle that will pin you to the back of your seat and make the trip home from the school run an absolute blast.

It is the result of someone piping up in a planning meeting at the VW Group and asking why you can’t put a 300hp 2.0-litre petrol engine from a Golf R hot hatch into a mid-size SUV. Many nervy meetings later that person got their wish and several years later I find myself looking at what is essentially a performance car on stilts. With wellies on.

This is the Ateca VZN, which means that it comes with loads of practical and not-so-practical frills, which I could write out in a big list or you could head to the spec section of this review if you really want to know exactly what is included. I’m going to stick with talking about the fundamentals of how this car has started life with the Webster family to begin with.

Space and light for all

I’m very much in that stage of life where I need a car to be many things, and the chances are that one of the very first things I will do is slot a pair of child seats into the second row, often before I have turned the engine on for the first time.

Huge tick here as the Ateca has my favourite type of Isofix connections – the ones with little plastic surrounds and covers that you can toss into the door bin and forget about until it goes back or your child grows out of a car seat. No scrabbling around trying to dig between the seat back and cushion here, thankfully. The rear seat cushion is also wide enough that my six-year-old can be left to strap herself in as the buckle is easily found and not buried under her seat.

I’d prefer it if the passenger seat could go a little further forward, or that the rear seats could be set a bit further back, so the youngest doesn’t spend the entire time kicking dust onto the back of the glorious sports seats, but she’s happy with the little hole in the backrest that she can see through, which has possibly helped distract her from that task a bit.

The final bonus is the huge panoramic roof on our car – being able to entertain the rear-seat occupants by flooding their area with light always goes down well.

The boot is a decent shape, if not vast at only 485 litres, and the hands-free sensor is handy but not the most reactive I have used. A couple of foot swipes usually gets the job done if the first doesn’t work though.

A trip to Ikea, when I forgot to empty the boot of buggy and bike before setting off, was an early test of its abilities. Thankfully with a little reorganisation and a dropped seat, we were able to get two flat-pack boxes in without an extra trip home to ditch the extra stuff.

Sporting intentions

At the other end of the spectrum is the Ateca’s performance. The kids are happy in the back seats, but have I enjoyed it on those journeys where I have left them behind?

There are multiple driving modes to choose from – Normal, Sport and Cupra being the most prominent. I’ll confess from the off that the majority of the time, I have simply left it in Normal, but that is a reflection of my passengers’ desires as much as anything. On one early occasion when I showed the children how quickly the new car could accelerate, they reacted with trepidation rather than enthusiasm. Work to be done there, perhaps…

The other reason I’ve left it in Normal most of the time is that it really does seem sufficient for every-day driving. Putting the Ateca into Cupra mode feels a bit like getting dolled up in full lycra and running spikes to go for a little jog. Normal is still akin to a pair of high-end running shoes, just without the overt intent.

Don’t get me wrong, I have dabbled, and it is great fun when you do, with everything feeling a touch firmer, a little noisier and that bit quicker, but it’s hard to shake that you are doing this in a practical family car.

Multiple personalities

What I can’t quite see the point of is the Sport mode. It feels a bit half-hearted – it dials up the intent a bit, and takes away a little of the comfort, but doesn’t go all the way. I’d cut the modes to two and make things a little simpler.

Given I’m living with the Ateca in winter, I did have call on a particularly icy day to slot it into ‘Snow’ mode as well, and immediately could tell the benefits. Being able to regulate the power, and keep the revs in check will be handy if we get a proper covering of the white stuff.

So far, then, the two personalities of the Cupra Ateca are clear. It fulfils its brief of being both fast performance toy and of being practical family transport. But the old truism hangs over me – if I can’t have my cake looking all lovely and still tuck in with a nice cuppa, then where are the compromises? More to come in my next update.

Update 2: Shades and ranges

I left my last report talking about the compromises of life with the Ateca, so it is only fair I lay a few of them out. Or rather the big one.

First, though, some more good things. The Ateca has proved a supremely easy vehicle to live with through the grotty weather we have had in recent weeks. It has been a real test to not wash it more often (it would have been pointless as it tends to end up filthy as soon as the next drive you take) as it looks so good when spotless.

As you can see in the pictures, it is an attractive shade of green, albeit an unusual one. It turns out it is officially grey, or Dinamica Shark Grey, which will be validation for my youngest daughter who has dubbed it ‘The grey car’. So it’s a greeny-grey rather than a grey-green.

The other factor that looks all the better when allowed to shine is those alloy wheels. I confess I am a bit partial to a coloured flash on an alloy wheel but did wonder if the gold hue on the Ateca might test my love.

It turns out not, and they have grown on me even more. This meant I gleefully accepted when the product testing team came around wanting a car to act as a test model for their latest batch of wheel cleaners. If only they had brought a vacuum for the interior too…

Riding high

Any car with an overly firm ride will get very short shrift from my family. They were spoiled by the Dacia Jogger, then voiced their displeasure at the ‘bit bumpy’ BMW X1. So far so good for the Cupra Ateca, despite its sporting intentions.

Not once has anyone, adult or otherwise, complained of it being too bumpy or similar. They also like the view out the back, particularly thanks to the glorious panoramic sunroof that floods the cabin with light.

Cost of ownership

I’d normally save talk of fuel economy until I’m a few updates in, but the Ateca has made it impossible to ignore. I’m now a couple of thousand miles into life with it, which is the point at which you would normally hope that things start to improve. That’s when engines are run in, things move a bit freer and the economy is normally getting a bit better.

That hasn’t really happened though. The best full tank I’ve had is 33mpg, and that was after some long motorway miles around Christmas. Overall I’m averaging 29.1mpg, with plenty of tanks in the 26-28mpg region.

I’m spending more than I’d like on fuel as a result but, there is an odd side effect of that. When the fuel gauge is showing three bars remaining it often gives a remaining range of around 75-80 miles. I don’t know about you, but that feels like slightly squeaky-bum time, not the sort of range you’d expect when the gauge is showing just under half.

I start hunting out a fuel station when that happens, as I know that the fuel light will likely come on by the end of my 50-odd-mile commute otherwise. I’m getting range anxiety in a non-electric car.

Update 3: Testing the space

The vast majority of journeys I take in the Cupra Ateca are the sort of humdrum trips that make up family life. This doesn’t really play to its core strengths as either a practical SUV or as a 300hp high-performance car.

I’ve been casting concerns about economy to the wind and opting to test both of these two extremes recently. Despite my already stated resistance to the multiple driving modes, I’ve been twirling the dial down between the front seats in a greater variety of situations, to see when the various modes come into their own.

Cupra comes alive

What is of particular note is that the Cupra mode is very notably different from all the others. Exhaust notes might be dialled back these days, but there is still a slight sound differential, while everything feels so much firmer and faster.

The problem with that is the current state of the UK roads. A pothole feels so much harsher when your suspension is set to maintain a tall SUV’s stability around a glass-like racing circuit. At least it means it deals better with those last-minute changes of direction to dodge whatever crater has just opened up on the commute.

The speed of response is far improved, too. The normal mode is dialled back to the extent it almost feels underwhelming a lot of the time – many is a time I’ve found myself doubting the 300hp claim as it takes a hefty application of right foot to get it to accelerate with any urgency. There is a greater degree of instantaneousness in Cupra mode, but increased exposure to electric vehicles and their immediate torque means that even that doesn’t feel as super swift off the line as it once did.

Its skills are more readily apparent when you are already on the move, with the gearbox holding onto a lower ratio in Cupra, so it feels permanently ready to provide a blast of snarly speed once you’ve exited a corner.

My biggest issue with it is nothing to do with the car, though – the eldest child is not a fan of fast acceleration, even though the youngest seemingly loves it. This, more than any concerns about fuel economy, harsh rides or being perceived as a local hooligan, is what is keeping the Ateca in Normal mode.

Two-wheeled test

As anyone knows, the real test of a car’s practicality is not how many evenly shaped suitcases it can take in the book, it’s how it deals with the odder shaped items in life. Think buggies, bags of footballs or – in my most recent experience – mountain bikes.

Most bikes I have carried in a car boot of late have been designed for the smallest of riders or, before that, were skinny road bikes with quick-release wheels. I’d therefore blithely assumed that getting my new purchase home would be a simple affair.

I hadn’t considered that this particular machine was somewhat larger of wheel and frame than a road bike, though, and there were no levers to remove the wheel in a hurry. Not wanting to have to go back into the shop to borrow the necessary tools to release the front wheel or to have to explain at home why I also had returned with a bonus bike rack, I set about exploiting the skills I picked up over many a session of Tetris in my youth.

Thankfully, with the front seat fully slid forward and tipped towards the dash, it made it in with millimetres to spare. This solution will only work when I’m travelling alone and when the tyres are as showroom fresh, though, so I’m off to research the best bike racks.

Update 4: Farewell time – missing the practicality, not the costs

The Cupra Ateca has left me, so it’s time to reflect on its time in our company. When a long-term vehicle goes back I tend to assess it as a success or not depending on whether I would have happily stumped up my own cash to keep it in the family.

Some have far exceeded expectations, like the Dacia Jogger, which remains the smaller family members’ favourite vehicle in many ways (not including pickup trucks, OBVIOUSLY). Others, like the Cupra Ateca, went the other way and became less likely to be a vehicle we wanted to keep.

This surprised me in some ways, as the basic Ateca, in Seat form at least, is perfect for us. It’s a slightly high-riding SUV without feeling massive in the nursery car-park’s tight spaces. It’s got a boot that is big enough for most of the adventures and tedium that life with two small children brings about. It’s also got a smart enough interior with some genuinely practical touches – I wish that every rear Isofix point was as easily accessed.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to love the bits that made it a Cupra. That fuel economy, harsher ride and engine that felt like it was being wasted in a practical family car all grated somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, I love that engine – it’s got a slightly old-school slug of performance that asks you to put it into its sportiest mode and blip down a couple of ratios using the steering-wheel-mounted gear-shift paddles.

Sure, legislation means that it is slightly muted these days, but the Akrapovic exhaust helps it sound even better too, so long as you keep your ears open and the Disney soundtrack turned down.

It rides pretty well, too, even if those amusingly gratuitous gold-tinted alloys err on the firm side. Visibility is brilliant and the steering is sharp. But even on the odd rare occasions that I get to enjoy the drive solo, there is still a child seat visible in the rear-view mirror to remind me what this car really is first and foremost – practical family transport.

And that is what confuses me about this. The two sides are so conflicting – if you want a practical family car, why go for the one that has the shouty engine that you will likely rarely be able to use and costs you loads more in fuel? And if you want a performance car, why not go for one that has to lug around the extra bulk of the Ateca?

Don’t get me wrong, I love both sides of this car, I just can’t quite reconcile them being together in one package. Go for a smaller petrol engine in the Ateca and enjoy it for all of its practical and charming ways, or go for the Cupra Leon with this barnstorming engine. I just can’t work out why you would want to combine the two.

Other points of note

While we’re here, I’ll do a quick round up of a couple of other small things that I do and don’t like about the Ateca. Firstly, the touchscreen is pretty good, which might sound like I am damning it with faint praise. However so many of the recent VW Group vehicles are fitted with infuriating infotainment systems, and this was one that isn’t too bad. It comes with physical shortcuts down the side and it’s simpler than the more modern equivalents.

What I wasn’t particularly impressed with was the key. It had a carbon-fibre look to it, but it turned out that this was a slightly tacky cover. The key underneath did at least have a Cupra logo, rather than a Seat one, but it didn’t take long for the cover to come unglued. Plus the little metal Cupra logo came unattached and dropped off somewhere, never to be seen again.

I’m not going to use that as a metaphor for the Ateca as a whole, as that would be doing it a disservice. Every element of it is very good, it’s just the combination I wasn’t totally sold on.