Chase & Status and Lancey Foux did their ‘Homework’: inside CUPRA’s Manchester car launch
The Spanish brand's new Raval is its smallest and most affordable car yet - yet its launch was anything but
By Dale Fox
On the night of 9 April, Projekts Skatepark in Manchester wasn’t hosting a car advert. Or at least, CUPRA didn’t want it to feel like one. The Spanish brand had taken over the concrete bowl for the global reveal of its new electric model, the Raval – simultaneous with five other events across Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Berlin and Milan.
In Manchester, the lineup was Chase & Status (who picked up Song of the Year at the 2024 Rolling Stone UK Awards) and Lancey Foux, using the occasion to premiere their new collaboration ‘Homework’, blending drum & bass and UK rap in front of a crowd that had queued all afternoon to get into the ticketless event.
The choice of Manchester as the UK host wasn’t a coincidence. CUPRA opened its Manchester City Garage a year ago (one of 12 globally) – and UK managing director Marcus Gossen is clear about why the city was chosen over London.
“Manchester, with its culture, with its inspiring people, with the artists and the innovative spirit, completely fits and matches the values and spirit of the CUPRA brand,” he told Rolling Stone UK ahead of the main event. A City Garage, in case you’re wondering, is less a dealership than “a place where someone meets the brand, not the car,” Gossen explained.
The car itself goes on sale in the UK this summer from £22,785 – CUPRA’s smallest and most affordable to date, built on Volkswagen Group’s MEB+ platform alongside the incoming VW ID. Polo and Skoda Epiq. Gossen is unbothered by the shared architecture. “When you experience a Raval, you experience a completely different car to any group sister brand.”
It sits 15mm lower than the platform’s standard configuration, runs a wider track, and on the top-spec VZ variant produces 222bhp through an electronic limited-slip differential.
Named after the neighbourhood in central Barcelona where CUPRA is based, the Raval carries a heavy cultural weight. El Raval has been a centre of LGBTQ+ life, artistic subculture and political resistance since the 1920s. Patrick Sievers, CUPRA’s global head of marketing, described it to us as “the most creative, the most dynamic neighbourhood, very much linked to music.”
The music strategy is the clearest expression of CUPRA’s broader ambitions. Alongside Chase & Status in Manchester, the simultaneous European events featured Mahmood in Milan, Kim Petras in Berlin, and Nathy Peluso in Barcelona. It follows an earlier project with Rosalía, who recorded a brand manifesto for CUPRA.
“Music is an amazing tool to get to your inner emotions,” Sievers says, “and that’s what CUPRA is also all about.” The Raval’s Sennheiser Ambeo 12-speaker sound system – standard from the Dynamic Plus trim – is the in-car extension of that logic.
What CUPRA is trying to do with the Raval is expand its audience without diluting its identity. Gossen acknowledges the demographic shift directly: “We are already the brand of the youngest audience, and we think even younger people, but also the more mature people, will also be very attracted by the car.”
A sub-£23,000 electric hatchback that may qualify for the government’s £1,500 EV grant opens CUPRA up to an audience it hasn’t previously reached. If the Manchester launch is anything to go by, the brand has a clear idea of how to bring them in without leaving its identity at the door.
The CUPRA Raval arrives in UK showrooms in summer 2026.