CUPRA brought Chase & Status and Lancey Foux to Manchester for a different kind of car launch

Home of The Haçienda, The Smiths and Oasis, Manchester has long been Britain’s biggest music hub. Last night, the city matched up to its legacy. Car brand CUPRA UK took over Projekts Skatepark to mark the ‘World Premiere’ of the Raval — the latest addition to the Spanish company’s electric car range — hosting a mini festival for local music fans. 

Lancey Foux and Chase & Status headlined the event, treating the crowd to a stellar live debut of their first-ever collaboration, ‘Homework’. “We are presenting a new car, the artists are presenting their new product, their new creativity, and I think that’s a very beautiful symbiosis,” Global Head of Marketing, Patrick Sievers, told us.

The gig in Manchester was just one of six events orchestrated by the automotive company, happening simultaneously across Europe. Each World Premiere was opened by an artist performing an as-of-then unreleased track. From singer-songwriter Mahmood in Milan to rapper Dsiz in Paris, Sievers explained how the performers were carefully chosen to fit the brand’s unconventional identity: “It’s not only about their size, their reach and so on. It’s about their personality. We really want artists.”

The Raval itself was named after one of Barcelona’s most “creative” and “dynamic” neighbourhoods, Sievers told us. And so, the whole launch campaign had to reflect this. “There always has to be something crazy happening,” he said. It’s a logic that HUNGER can definitely get behind — and Lancey, rapping on the roof of a car opposite a mural of Princess Leia certainly fits the bill.