According to Cupra’s CEO, the brand has an advantage that other automakers within the Volkswagen Group don’t: It lacks history. Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, and even Volkswagen have deep heritages and intricate traditions baked into their identities, which come with certain expectations.
Cupra doesn’t have to worry about any of that. The brand is only six years old.
“I think that puts us in a good position to compete against other challenger brands that are coming into the market,” Cupra CEO Wayne Griffiths told Motor1 ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show last month. “And I think the VW Group needs that as well.”
SEAT created Cupra in 2018 as a standalone marquee, and it’s been a success across Europe ever since. Cupra has sold 750,000 cars on the continent in just six years, with VW Group’s home country of Germany becoming the brand’s largest market.
“What encourages me is the success we’ve had in such a remarkably short time in Europe, particularly in markets like Germany,” Griffiths said. “That gives me confidence that if we can do that in Europe, then we could also… have success in the US [United States] as well.”
Photo by: Cupra
Cupra CEO Wayne Griffiths
“I think that puts us in a good position to compete against other challenger brands that are coming into the market.”
Griffiths plans to bring the Spanish brand to the US by the end of the decade. The automaker is already considering a large SUV that will directly appeal to American consumers, bigger than what Cupra currently offers in Europe, and it’s exploring a partnership with Penske Automotive Group to provide the distribution and retail experience.
The CEO said the brand will need products “Americans would appreciate,” which, he added, doesn’t necessarily mean “the same lineup of products that have been really successful in Europe.” We don’t know what the portfolio could look like, but Cupra’s current lineup across the pond is mostly an assortment of crossovers.
Griffiths also revealed that the company’s initial plan to launch here as a pure battery-electric brand is dead on arrival as the EV market falters in America and Europe. Buyers can also expect hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and conventional combustion powertrains when Cupra arrives, even as the company works toward an electrified future.
“I think you need the right product for the market, and that’s not just bringing your European products here,” he said.
Cupra has found fans in younger European buyers, a demographic the company hopes to court in the US. Cupra’s customers are a “generation younger than the rest of the market,” according to Griffiths, by about 10 to 15 years. He attributes that success to the brand’s design and features.
The younger generation has “a different set of values,” said Griffiths. “They’re looking for something different. They want to drive a car different than what their parents or grandparents drove. They want to stand out.”
Cupra is already testing the brand’s design language and market positioning with American consumers, which the CEO said has gone “really, really well.” However, Griffiths doesn’t underestimate the challenge of coming to the US, saying the brand will have to rely on the scale and existing platforms of VW Group to ensure Cupra is profitable in the US.
“We don’t want to be a volume brand, so we need to share some scale, some technological platforms with other brands,” he said. Cupra will need at least a couple of cars with sufficient volume to make its strategy work and to be able to make money, and it’ll likely have to build at least one of the US cars somewhere in the North American region.
“You’re talking about 50,000 units per car as an ideal minimum,” he said, but any chance one of those models will be a production version of the two-door DarkRebel concept is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
“If you want to become an iconic brand, then you need to have iconic products,” Griffiths admitted as he considered the brand’s future lineup. However, he said Cupra has to “wait for the right time to be able to invest in that type of product [DarkRebel] because this is a very small volume, very niche.”
Such a car would undoubtedly set some expectations for the brand going forward.
Read the full article here
