Long run-up
Cupra wants to take a more individual path with the Leon ‘inherited’ from Seat and that is why the Cupra Leon is awaiting a fairly major facelift. Apparently drastic enough to test it for quite a long time before the market introduction.
More than a year and a half ago, Cupra briefly showed its future model range. Then a Cupra Leon with a completely different nose rolled onto the stage. Although this is a major facelift, we secretly expected that the production version would not be long in coming. Nothing turned out to be further from the truth, because Cupra is still testing the facelifted Leon, now in the icy north of Sweden.
We already got a clear picture of the updated Cupra Leon in June 2022
The Cupras Leon that our spy photographer captured are still similarly camouflaged to the cars that showed up on the Nordschleife last summer. The nose is therefore almost completely wrapped and yet it is clearly visible that the production version will have almost the same front as we saw on the show model in June 2022. This means that from now on the grille is completely housed in the front bumper, one floor lower than we are used to from both the Seat Leon and the Cupra Leon. The Cupra Leon also gets new headlights, containing triangular elements for the daytime running lights. The rear lights are also designed differently, with more angular illuminated parts.
We did not assume that there were major technical changes in the pipeline, but given the fairly long run-up, there may be more news under the sun. If we take a look at the facelifted Volkswagen Golf, we also aim for a longer driving range (about 100 km) for the plug-in hybrid version for the Cupra Leon. Also, if we look at the refreshed Golf GTE, the Leon with a plug will logically be a bit stronger: 272 hp instead of 245 hp.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl