Seat Ibiza FR 1.0 Eco TSI, review: The law of diminishing returns dictates, go for a cheap, Chilli-red one

This “facelift” has sharpened up the styling and softened down the suspension, all to the good

Seat Ibiza FR 1.0 Eco TSI

I must say I was quite impressed by the Seat Ibiza before I looked at the price tag of my test car: £18,150, on the road as they say. It’s an older design now, dating back to 2008, but this “facelift” has sharpened up the styling and softened down the suspension, all to the good. Not that it needed that much freshening up, really, and certainly not as much as I, for example, do. We seem to apply much more stringent criteria to our choice of car than of partner and are more demanding of blameless pieces of machinery than we are of ourselves. I’ll leave those thoughts hanging.

Anyway, about the money. You could probably knock a grand or more off that if you drove a hard bargain with your Seat dealer. And yet it still seems an awful lot of money for, well, a Seat Ibiza. Of course the price of a VW Polo GT, a close VW Group relative of the Ibiza, is about the same and the similarly related Skoda Fabia vRS a little less. So maybe I’m just a bit behind the times. But then again, the basic design being about seven years old, so is the Seat.

It does, though, make we wonder again about the value we’re getting for new cars. The popularity of PCP plans and other leasing/part-leasing plans – where the monthly payments for the use of an expensive, brand new car are very low – tend to disguise the real cost of motoring, and ignore the underlying nature of what you’re doing, which is basically borrowing some money at a fairly high interest rate, and leasing a car. It seems too good to be true, and that’s usually a bad sign.

But the Seat Ibiza does come in slower, less fancy versions than the one I tried, the latter complete with automatic DSG 7-speed (7-speed!) gear-change. Combined with automatic stop-start this did make for a slightly stuttering take off from the lights at times, but it feels lively, and its performance belies its three-cylinder, 1-litre set-up. Turbo and super-charged, it is the apogee of modern engine technology, and I do hope that its long-term reliability will help to embellish VW group’s tarnished reputation for honest engineering.

As with many other model lines, though, you might be best off opting for the cheapest one in the range, which would be the SE, with the same little engine but in a lower state of tune. I should add that all versions of the Ibiza come in really gorgeous colours, especially “Chilli Red”, and, for some people, that is the most important factor of all. A refreshing thought.

Seat Ibiza FR 1.0 Eco TSI

PRICE £18,150 (as tested, starts from £11,410)

ENGINE Capacity 1-litre petrol

POWER OUTPUT (PS @ RMP) 110 @ 5,000

TOP SPEED (MPH) 122

FUEL ECONOMY (MPG) 64.2

CO2 EMISSIONS (G/KM) 102