The Nurburgring is the place where all good hot hatches go to be tested, regardless of what powers them.
Our spies just sent us a fresh batch of photos showing the upcoming hot version of the SEAT El-Born, which will bear a Cupra badge. There will be an equivalent spiced up variant of the Volkswagen ID.3, but the Cupra will come first; if you’re looking forward to owning a hot hatch underpinned by the VW group MEB platform, the Cupra El-Born will quell that desire first.
It is expected to debut sometime in early 2021, possibly right alongside the regular SEAT El-Born, with less of a performance focus. But what will set the Cupra El-Born apart from the more sedate variants?
Gallery: 2021 Cupra El-Born
14 Photos Well, we don’t know how powerful it’s going to be, but its peak output could even be as high as 302 horsepower, and it may even feature a dual-motor all-wheel drive system, if it will prove to be just SEAT’s version of Volkswagen’s GTX variant. The only tidbit of information regarding the Cupra El-Born’s performance that has so far been shared is its 0 – 60 km/h (0 – 31 mph) time of 2.9 seconds. Its battery won’t be any bigger than the biggest already announced for the ID.3 and SEAT El-Born – a 77 kWh pack that should provide a WLTP range of about 500 km (310 miles) on one charge. If you were wondering what the Cupra El-Born will look like (and how it’s going to be differentiated from the lower performance SEAT model), we expect its look to not stray too far from that of the concept that previewed it. These latest spy photos show the hot El-Born doing its obligatory rounds of the Nurburgring under camouflage. Automakers don’t just test their sporty models here, but it is these models that benefit the most from this testing since they ware more likely to be subjected to track driving – we wonder if the Cupra El-Born will set the fastest electric hot hatch time around the Nordschleife, maybe even surpassing the current gas-burning Ring king, the Renault Megane RS Trophy-R. Source: Read Full Article
