2023 Cupra DarkRebel Concept

CUPRA pushes the boundaries of automotive design with the unveil of CUPRA DarkRebel, a virtual sports car.

Embodying the unconventional challenger brand’s spirit of performance and emotion, the CUPRA DarkRebel is the first showcar presented through Metahype, CUPRA’s space in the metaverse.

Wayne Griffiths, CEO of CUPRA: "After 5 years of building the brand CUPRA in a nowadays world, it is time to think about the next step. Our next dream. The CUPRA DarkRebel is the ultimate interpretation of our vision.”

The CUPRA DarkRebel brings CUPRA’s DNA to the maximum without any boundaries. It is not a prediction, but rather a provocation, showing that design is a dialogue, not a process.

Design with unfiltered CUPRA DNA

The CUPRA DarkRebel is defined by its sharp lines and the athletic proportion of a sports car combined with a shooting break architecture.

The showcar features a radical and sharper than ever front end. The long endless bonnet has an arrow shape that provides the maximum feeling of speed, while the cabin is pushed to the rear, to create attractive proportions.

The triangular light signature, the brand’s icon, comes with a new approach that emerges from the body, bringing the car alive, while the central spine connects the front and the rear as the core of the skeleton of this all-electric sport car.

The CUPRA DarkRebel is a driver-oriented car, with a radical interior that evolves with an asymmetric central spine as a structural core of car. With progressive bucket seats, and the progressive gamifying steering wheel and the shifter, that connects the human and the machine all in one.

Designed to enter in a new dimension where desire, emotion and pushing the limits is the brand’s driving force.

Hyper Configurator

With the CUPRA DarkRebel, CUPRA goes beyond the constraints of materiality and expands the design into the intangible, intensifying the experience. The potential of the virtual world enhances creativity, boosts imagination, and amplifies the senses.

That’s why, CUPRA has created a virtual lab: the so-called Hyper Configurator, where users can push their creativity without the limitations of the physical feasibility in the material world.

In the Hyper Configurator, users can interact in different virtual environments and experiment in creating unseen colours, materials and finishes with outstanding results.

CUPRA’s Hyper Configurator provides tools to express the unexpressed, enabling all the CUPRA Tribe to create their very own versions of the show car and influence the final design of a physical model that will be presented in the near future.

Depending on the degree of exponentiality the user chooses, ranging from realism to imagination, the Hyper Configurator will allow to dynamically alter some car's attributes and surroundings, such as colours, graphics, and effects of that model.

In the Hyper Configurator, users can choose between 3 environments - the Exponential square, Exponential cube, and Exponential infinite, in which they can transform the show car and create their very own CUPRA DarkRebel:

-Exponential square: where the CUPRA Tribe can live the raw value of CUPRA design. Inspired by natural elements like minerals and stones, here the CUPRA raw textures and earthy colours can be experienced and challenged by the user in the Hyper Configurator.

-Exponential cube: where you get a soft spot for the racing world. Here the digital aesthetic of neon like glow, algorithmic movements, parametric geometries and fluor lights can be experimented. Sleek and vibrant, orthogonal, and fluid at same time.

-Exponential ∞: the highest level of Exponentiality disconnects from reality and embraces a dreamlike, otherworldly, and surreal universe with no constraints from the physical world. The environment and materials choices are dominated by an ethereal feel creating a fully realized metaverse.

Upon completing the configuration, users can share a video of their unique model.

With a unique design and cutting-edge technology, the DarkRebel will stand out and make a statement.

Stay tuned as the physical version of the CUPRA DarkRebel Showcar will be coming soon, following the gathering of all the users’ configurations, influencing in the final design of the car.

Source: motor.ru; SEAT press release