Spy photographers have captured two different versions of next year’s revised Cupra Leon out testing, and though it’s a mid-life refresh rather than a clean-sheet overhaul, so there aren’t any major sheetmetal changes coming, that doesn’t mean you’ll struggle to tell the old and new cars apart. In fact, as facelifts go, the Leon appears to be getting some major surgery that involves grafting on the face from the Cupra Tavascan.
The Tavascan, in case you need a nudge, is
an electric SUV coupe from Cupra that’s the brand’s answer to the VW ID.5, and
built from the same MEB platform. Obviously, none of the EV hardware will find
its way onto the Leon, which will stick with four-cylinder combustion power.
But from the shape of the bumper visible
beneath the disguise of this prototype, it looks like the Leon will at least
resemble its Tavascan cousin, meaning it will lose the current Leon’s small
grille and adopt a wide, black grille that stretches right across the bumper.
And that’s not just us using our X-ray specs on the camouflage wrap. Cupra gave
us a glimpse of the facelifted Leon when it rolled out the Tavascan as well as
the refreshed Formentor and Born at an event in June 2022.
We’re expecting to see the revised Leon
early next year and it will probably remain on sale through to 2028. Whether it
survives after that, we’ll have to wait and see, and if it does, it will almost
certainly be as an EV.
