Cupra Born VZ - long-term review

It didn’t take long. It was just a few days into running this Cupra Born VZ and I was about to begin the A303 and M3 slog from my parents’ house back to London. Simple enough, but I always like to leave the nav on in the background just in case there are any accidents, particularly large traffic jams or awkward diversions. All are common on the A303 on a Sunday.

The Born’s 12in infotainment screen loaded with its usual apathy, and on trying to connect my phone using the wireless Apple CarPlay I was initially presented with a black screen surrounded by the shortcuts up top and climate controls running along the bottom. No CarPlay in sight.

I disconnected my phone, got out of the car to switch it off, locked it and tried again. This time I was greeted with a message saying my phone was connecting, so I set off in the hope that it would soon sort itself out. Unfortunately it never did connect, and that message remained on the screen without budging. I could control a few of the car’s functions around it but couldn’t use anything that required the centre of the screen. Bit awkward, and also how I discovered the Born’s voice control system really isn’t all that clever. Sleeping passengers did not appreciate me shouting “play BBC Radio 5 Live” on repeat.

Anyway, after much jabbing the central screen gained some sentience and decided that it would perform a full, hard-reset… while the car was travelling at motorway speeds. Only afterwards did I discover that I could have initiated that reset at a more sensible time by holding down the infotainment’s power button for around 15 seconds.

That’ll be useful *if* there is a next time, but although the wireless phone mirroring has been patchy since then, the screen itself hasn’t had any further existential crises. Shame, because when Paul Horrell recently ran two updated VW ID.3s he reported no screen wipeouts across his entire time with the cars.

When it is working, the Cupra’s central screen is actually pretty simple, and the menu systems are easy to navigate. A swipe down from the top of the screen brings up your chosen shortcuts too, meaning it’s one of the easiest modern cars in which to turn off the lane-keep assist and speed limit warning bong. This is great news.

Elsewhere in the interior? The Sabelt seats are excellent (although I recently drove the Alfa Junior Veloce and the race-spec chairs – also from Sabelt – might be even better) and the augmented reality head-up display works very well. Worth noting that it won’t give you help with directions if you’re using Google Maps in Apple CarPlay, but will if you use Apple Maps or of course the car’s own navigation system. I still can’t understand the logic of the dual-function window switches though and constantly find myself opening the rear windows accidentally having unknowingly pressed the touch-sensitive ‘REAR’ button on the same panel.

The touch-sensitive buttons on the steering wheel also mean I’m turning the volume up on the stereo every time I turn left, but I do like the drive mode buttons mounted on said wheel. Great interior materials too, and I’m a fan of the copper accents.