Cupra Formentor VZ Edition 310 – long-term review

I’ll start with some caveats. As a car, I am very much enjoying the Cupra Formentor. I like the way it looks, I like the space it has to offer  - especially in the back with teenage family members - I like the slightly rambunctious way it drives when you feel like it. I like the fact people ask me about it, and the general way it goes about things.

I’d love to try one on 17-inch steel wheels and tall semi-off-road tyres (particularly on the lanes where I live), but that’s a thing for another day. But there’s something I’m really struggling with, and that’s the multimedia interface. Very rarely these days do I get infuriated with a car. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a bit older, maybe a touch more patient, or maybe it’s because annoying absolutes are getting further and further apart in car manufacturing.

But I have to say that I’ve come pretty close to losing it with the Formentor’s touchscreen this month. Something that is not, it has to be said, the fault of Cupra as a brand, because I got a VW Golf R in for a bit of a comparison and found it to be equally awful for my blood pressure. 

So let’s delve into it a bit. First of all, I feel that the layout and experience are a bit confusing. I thought I’d get used to it, but after a couple of months the obvious thing is that it’s just not that intuitive. There are two or three routes to common functions (not necessary), with a Rubik’s Cube of up/down and left/right swipes. Some of the functions are buried in weird places (the reset for the trip computer is in the infotainment library rather than ‘Driving Data’ menus, for instance), and the voice activation is brilliant now and again.

But ‘brilliant now and again’ is the death of consistency, and the start of a migraine. The system just does stuff I don’t like; I sync my dual-zone aircon, but it defaults to independent every time you switch off the car. When you try and browse the radio station list by putting a finger on the screen, it changes the radio station, and then it will randomly flash a bigger display page for the logo of the channel after a few minutes, which always, always makes me look down. Why?

Even worse, the haptic bar for temperature control and volume sits under the touchscreen, and when bumping down a road, I often inadvertently rest my hand on it to press a touchscreen tile, changing one or the other. And if you switch the car off, the radio stays on, but the wheel-mounted volume control disengages.

And that’s even before we get into the laggy processor and inconsistent touchscreen. And yes, I have tried everything - long presses, making sure my hands are dry, hitting the buttons precisely. But sometimes the ‘screen will work at the top, but not the bottom. Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes to boot up. Sometimes it works, sometimes you press, nothing happens for five seconds, so you press again, and then the screen doubles the action.

If this were the UX of a mobile phone, you’d bin it. So why have we got this on a car that costs nearly £50k? For balance here other systems I’ve tried in VW’s Golf and ID3 have been equally inconsistent. And there’s the thing; inconsistency and making something distracting to use is a Big Fail for on-board systems. You’re supposed to be driving. A big, one-stop, multi-brand plug’n’play touchscreen might be cost-effective for the VW Corporation, but if you’re going to do that, you better make damn sure it works 99-percent faultlessly.

People have suggested that I should just set the car up how I like it and stop messing with it. But my kids change the radio station. I change the temperature depending on the weather, which might be several times on one journey. I put the heated seats on and off, depending on how my bottom feels. I make use of the systems. And I can’t help but feel that I’m a beta-tester for a product that isn’t quite finished. Bluntly, if this were my money, it might well be a deal-breaker. 

It’s a disservice to Cupra, really, because this isn’t a bit of the car it has any choice in. And after a chat with the Mothership, HFF is popping into a dealer for a software update which will - we hope  - cure some of the issues. A fix that is available for all Cupra owners should they feel the need for it. Let’s hope it does, because this is a great car currently hamstrung by bad UX (User Experience). And it just goes to show that the odd knob and button can go a long way to making that experience a little less stressful.