Seat Ibiza 1.4SX Review

Overall Rating

High spec for the money. VW parts, good handling, good looking, nice exotic image especially in the brighter colours, the rear seats fold almost totally flat giving a reasonably large load area for a smallish hatch.

1.4 Engine was hard work as initially not very responsive, but seems to have freed up now it's over 20,000 miles and drives much better. A few niggly faults fixed under warranty.

I bought my Seat Ibiza 1.4SX after reading good reviews of the model and I wanted something that little bit different after having a couple of very commendable but common as muck Fiestas. My Seat Ibiza 1.4SX is a Dec 2004 54 reg and had 10,000 miles on the clock when i bought it in march 2006. It is the newest car I've ever owned.

The Seat Ibiza 1.4SX is quite an exotic looking car and shares some of it's looks with the Alfa Romeo 147 - the designer of the mk4 Seat Ibiza 1.4SX is an ex-designer from Alfa Romeo so that's probably where the influence comes from. I feel special in it because they are a reasonably rare car compared to the ubiquitous 206's and fiestas and even new mini's these days!

It's quite a fun car to drive although the performance at least to start with was disappointing. I fully expected the Seat Ibiza 1.4SX to be slower than my 1.4 fiesta as I knew that the Ibiza was only 75ps compared to the 90ps of the zetec engine. However I kept stalling as the engine revs would drop suddenly when pulling away and it took a while to get used to. I was frustrated with it's responsiveness up until a few months ago. I don't know why but it seems to respond much better now it's got a few more miles on the clock. I am no longer frustrated with it and it seems to pull away fine now, and sometimes even surprises me with it's nippiness!

The handling is good in my opinion, the suspension is firm and there is little to no body roll in cornering which inspires confidence. The firmness of the suspension means that it's not that comfortable if driving on poorly surfaced roads but I prefer a stiff suspension to having a car that bounces or wallows and I do not mind at all.

The seats are quite comfortable and supportive. There is a plethora of spec ranges which can be confusing. Mine has climate control, 15" alloy wheels and came with a CD player which I have changed for an MP3 CD/USB head unit. All Ibiza's come with air-conditioning as standard.

I have had a few little things go wrong with mine which have all been fixed under warranty none have caused a breakdown they're just annoying. The fog light/headlight switch was dodgy and I kept inadvertently switching the front foglights on when turning the headlights on this was fixed with a new switch and is now fine. There is a common fault with the rear washer pipe poping off - this happened on mine and was fixed with different clips. I also had a small leak in the radiator on my Ibiza but I haven't heard of this being a problem in other models.

The rear seats fold almost completely flat and give a reasonably large loading area, useful for trips to the dump or carrying adult bicycles. Both of which I have done with mine.

My Ibiza had it's 20k mile service in December. The service I get from Cheshunt Motors in Herts is second to none, but I have heard bad reports from customers about some other SEAT dealers.

All in all I love my Ibiza as it's good looking, fun to drive and is a little different. The interior plastics are a little hard but seem well put together on my model, there's no rattles. I think newer models have softer feel plastics. The Ibiza represents great value for money but I believe that some fare worse than others in terms of niggly faults - it probably depends if you have a "friday afternoon" car or not!