The new Ibiza is the first Seat designed under the direction of Luc Donckerwolke, formerly of Lamborghini. It’s also meant to represent something of a change of direction for Seat, upping the ante to fulfil Seat’s emotive, dynamic ethos.
There’s meant to be more aggression to the front end, with a lower grille and headlights than on the old car. Certainly, the sharper edges to the side strakes give it more tension than Seat’s other monobox-style designs. Arguably the look is better suited to the three-door model than this cooking five-door on 60-profile tyres.
Underneath, the Ibiza utilises the Volkswagen Group’s new PQ25 platform. This is its first application; it will also form the basis for the next Volkswagen Polo and will underpin Audi’s forthcoming A1.
Overall, the new Ibiza is 99mm longer than before and has wider tracks (up by 30mm at the front and 33mm at the rear). The body is also stiffer and, significantly, the front sub-frame is a one-piece assembly rather than three, making it stiffer and allowing far tighter production tolerances.
Seat has used more high-strength steel in the body than before, so the new car is claimed to be lighter than the previous Ibiza (by 47kg across the range), but at 4052mm long and 1105kg as tested, the Ibiza is among the longer and heavier superminis.
At launch, the range’s powerplants are entirely conventional. There are 1.2, 1.4 and 1.6-litre petrol engines, all mated to five-speed transmissions, with 1.4 and 1.9-litre diesels due to join the range in 2009.
We’re testing the 1.4-litre, 84bhp engine driving through a manual transmission. It’ll continue – as with the current model – to be the best-selling variant of the Ibiza.