Do chassis and motor upgrades for leading EV create a truly fun electric hot hatch?
MARK TISSHAW @mtisshaw
TESTED 15.5.24, CATALONIA, SPAIN ON SALE AUTUMN
Press presentations for new cars are normally given by someone from marketing with lots of graphs and charts about trim levels and why it’s better than X rival at Y thing. But the presentation for the new Cupra Born VZ was one to really sit up and pay attention to, because it was given by World Touring Car Championship driver turned performance car development engineer Jordi Gené, and it was all about brake pedal feel, suspension changes, drivetrain upgrades – our kind of language, signalling a car to be taken seriously.
The Born VZ is the hot version of the Born hatchback, which is already the EV that we rate the highest for handling appeal. It recently won our best sub-£40,000 EV test and last year beat a more specialist field where handling ability was placed at a premium.
The changes for the Born VZ (shorthand for ‘veloz’, which is Spanish for ‘fast’) are extensive. On the drivetrain side, the rear-mounted motor has had its power increased from 228bhp to 322bhp and its torque from 229lb ft to 402lb ft. This helps cut the 0-62mph time by more than a second to 5.6sec, while the top speed is up 25mph to 124mph.
The chassis updates are also significant: there are new springs and dampers for the rear suspension and tuning tweaks at the front. Adaptive dampers are standard and tuned to “transmit more from the road to the car”, said Gené, who summarised the overall changes as making the car feel “strong and sporty”.
The steering, meanwhile, has been given a new map to “translate faster to the driver what the front wheels are doing” as “another big focus of development”.
Yet perhaps the most focus of all was given to the brake pedal and its feel – something that has always been off in performance EVs, as the tuning has to factor in not only the traditional brakes but the regenerative braking from the motor too, which is why so many EVs have a spongy pedal feel.
The positioning of the Born VZ is quite different to other electric hot hatches and splits the difference of the extremes quite nicely: the Abarth 500e is stiff and raucous, while the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is high-tech and terrifically adjustable.
The chassis is good. There’s a lot of grip at the front
