Can A Warm Hatch With Only 140hp Really Live Up To The Hype?

Five months into our half-year loan of the Seat Ibiza ACT FR, you could say the car’s been pretty divisive within the Car Throttle confines. My taller colleagues have taken quite a shining to the Ibiza despite struggling to find a comfortable seating position, my shorter colleagues have admired the VAG hatch’s remarkable eco credentials and fun factor, whilst my RWD purist colleagues have smirked at the Ibiza’s flawed FWD setup.

So, naturally, I decided to grab the keys and spend some time getting to know the car to form my own conclusions.

Straight off the bat there are things I’m not particularly fond of. The steering wheel, for starters, is delicate and skinny compared to the meaty circular chunk I’ve been getting used to in my Peugeot RCZ R long-termer. The clutch is also fairly springy and there’s a lot of travel before you’re able to bite and engage gear, which means my left leg is working harder than I’d like, particularly in stop-start London traffic. Finally there’s the Garmin sat-nav which looks like an afterthought sitting atop the dashboard; it’s only slightly more intuitive than the Pug’s in-built unit, which isn’t saying a lot if you’ve spent any time at all in a recently-built Peugeot.

From the outside, Seat has managed to create a strong-looking B-segment hatchback. In FR trim, the Ibiza shows off some sporty red calipers, dual exhuasts, tinted rear windows and sits on 17-inch darkened alloys all for a modest £16,760.

It’s rare to find a car which offers both speed and efficiency, but it’s a formula Seat is attempting here with a 1.4-litre turbocharged engine that churns out 140hp and also uses Active Cylinder Technology. In real-world speak, this tech allows two cylinders from the four-pot to shut down when driving becomes more sedate. Why? To try and offer up a remarkable combined fuel economy 60mpg.

You’d think then that ACT would nag you to coast in-gear, and flood the dash with red warning symbols should you so dare as to feather the throttle. You’d be dead wrong; this Ibiza loves to be driven hard. I first notice that power surge from very low down the rev range, similar to the kind of torque shove you’d get with a diesel. Past 3000rpm, the 1.4-litre unit continues to thrum and the 62mph sprint (in dry conditions at least) can be executed in a brisk 7.8 seconds.

In the wet, it’s easy to have a little bit more fun. With the nanny systems off, the Ibiza’s tyres spin up without too much cajoling thanks to the wide torque band, but thankfully there’s not enough power to induce the kind of off-putting torque steer you’d get on a Ford Focus ST. And after you’ve managed to carry a healthy amount of speed on the straights, you can chuck the Ibiza into a corner without worrying about coming unstuck, although being brave and applying the throttle through a corner does take you past the grip limit of the front squealing tyres into a world of understeer.

“140hp might not seem a lot on paper, but in the real world, all of that power is usable all of the time.”

But is this car deserving of that special phrase petrolheads reserve for truly magical motoring moments - is the Ibiza fun to drive? In my eyes, it most certainly is. You see, we get spoiled regularly with rear-wheel drive performance saloons and all-wheel drive 296bhp rally-spec road cars. But they tend to come with hefty price tags, wincing wallets and a healthy fear that the car might just show you how little driving talent you really have.

Not so with this Seat Ibiza. You will always have more talent than it; your attempts to go faster and faster round that bend will only result in dabs of understeer at worst and a grin-inducing, ‘definitely going to post this on Facebook’ experience as you row through the six gears at best. 140hp might not seem a lot on paper, but in the real world, all of that power is usable all of the time.

And so while the internet continues to raise its collective eyebrow at front-wheel drive, while the forums continue to mock any car which runs under 200bhp on the dyno, and while you’re unlikely to see any dark-haired YouTube reviewers lobbing an Ibiza ACT FR sideways with lift-off oversteer round Anglesey, for me, determining whether a car is ‘fun’ really just boils down to this…

It’s not about how much power you have. It’s how you use it.