An electrified Seat Cupra is coming

While Seat won’t comment on rumours that Cupra is set to become a sub-brand, it’s used the Frankfurt Motor Show to tell us lots more is coming from its performance arm.

And some of it will be electrified. “Electric is a performance opportunity,” says R&D boss Dr Matthias Rabe. “Some people say electrification makes a car boring, I totally think it’s another way.”

He’s not far off putting it in his cars, either. “You will see something with Cupra and electrification pretty soon. Maybe first as a test, and I would not exclude anything, even talking about racing with electric. Whether it’s plug-in hybrid or fully electric, we have very nice ideas. And it’s always nice to have good ideas as an engineer!”

Seat appears a bit behind the curve, when its sister companies Audi and Volkswagen are showing what feels like an EV concept every fortnight. But Rabe assures us Seat is working on electric cars behind the scenes.

He also explains that Cupra will grow. The new Leon Cupra R is its most extreme model yet, but we can expect more sophisticated models, too.

Could everything end up with a Cupra badge? “In principle it could all look nice,” Rabe says. “We don’t have concrete plans for the smaller cars but I can tell you now an Ateca Cupra would be a nice idea. I can tell you it would handle and drive perfectly and there is no competitor in that area and price segment.”

So it seems they’ve made it, he’s driven it, and it’ll be out relatively soon. What won’t be out soon is a standalone Cupra, a bespoke model without a Seat as its base. “I would not say no to anything but right now we don’t have it planned,” says Rabe.

Electric Cupra racecars and an Ateca Cupra, then. What are your thoughts?