The Cupra DarkRebel is a shooting brake you can help design

The DarkRebel’s basic design is intended to represent “unfiltered ‘Cupra’ DNA”. What does that mean in reality? Lots of angles, lots of triangles, lots of sharp edges. It’s a properly aggressive-looking thing but not entirely divorced from what we know of Cupra production cars. Just look at that triple triangular light signature, for instance.

What sort of car is it? On the one hand, a long-nosed, long-legged super GT. Then as we move back, it has a stumpy hatch rear end. We can only conclude then that this ultimate expression of Cupra’s DNA, is one of the world’s craziest shooting brakes.

The cabin is designed to be ‘driver-oriented’ and is set quite far back in the car. There’s an asymmetric central spine, bucket seats and controls designed to appeal to gamers while focusing on driver involvement.

So back to that ‘having a say in how it looks’ thing. Indeed for the moment the only way to see the DarkRebel is via the ‘Hyper Configurator’, a piece of software that lets us configure the DarkRebel however we see fit. Described by Cupra as a ‘virtual lab’, it allows users to ‘push their creativity without the limitations of physical feasibility in the material world’. 

There are three environments to choose from, with the Exponential square, cube and infinity being inspired by nature, racing and surreality respectively, with each allowing more freedom of creativity than the last. Once you complete your configuration, you can share a video of it with Cupra, potentially influencing the final spec of the concept once it’s built.

As for whether this resembles something we might one day see in dealers? Doubtful but it’s certainly a statement of intent by Cupra, that it wants to continue distinguishing itself from Seat and its other group mates.