{"id":2047580,"date":"2026-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047580"},"modified":"2026-07-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T21:00:00","slug":"cupra-leon-estate-vz1-long-term-review-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047580","title":{"rendered":"Cupra Leon Estate VZ1 – long-term review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Although I take great delight in the fact that I managed to steal Charlie\u2019s Cupra \u2013 he\u2019s Top Gear’s head of video and owner of thousands of clamps, suction cups, tripods and an unhealthy number of cameras \u2013\u00a0I do feel a little guilty, too. Partly that\u2019s because he\u2019s now driving a DS something or other that looks more Postman Pat than avant-garde French goddess.<\/p>\n

But mostly it\u2019s because the Cupra is undoubtedly the photographer and videographer\u2019s perfect car: fast enough to hold station with most stars of our videos, big enough to swallow hundreds of kilos of gear, decent ride quality for tracking shots and brilliant on airport runs, too. Several camera guys have professed their love and I think one or two have put in an order on the back of our Garage hero\u2019s sterling work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As the Cupra seems to live at the Top Gear test track at the minute you might call it the new Reasonably Priced Car, although at \u00a350,160, I guess that depends on your definition of reasonable. It certainly does a lot<\/em> of things very, very well. The Leon\u2019s latest job was chasing the new rear-wheel drive Bentley Supersports through a thick fog of tyre smoke.<\/p>\n

\u2018How was it?\u2019 I asked the video team of Charlie and Harry Rudd. They couldn\u2019t answer as they were busy shooting a Bentley badge or wheel in the 18th different way (just in case), but I imagine Charlie would say something like, \u2018oh, so good. You tend to take for granted the engine on the road and almost forget how good it is. But when you use all the revs, the top-end is really exciting. Way more so than a Golf GTI\u2019s similar engine. Not to mention my soul-murdering DS whatever it\u2019s called’. Agreed.<\/p>\n

Harry would then perhaps go on to say. \u2018We had to turn off the start\/stop as it\u2019s really clunky and annoying. Plus, I wish the shifters had a nicer action as they feel more like a micro-switch than a proper paddle.\u2019 Bloody hell. So accurate these guys. But anyway, despite some small flaws the Cupra never stops grafting and is always impressive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although I take great delight in the fact that I managed to steal Charlie\u2019s Cupra \u2013 he\u2019s Top Gear’s head of video and owner of thousands of clamps, suction cups, tripods and an unhealthy number of cameras \u2013\u00a0I do feel a little guilty, too. Partly that\u2019s because he\u2019s now driving a DS something or other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2047580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2047580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2047580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2047580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2047580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}