SEAT Ibiza 1.2 TDI SE E Ecomotive review
by David Finlay (10 December 2010)
SEAT is so intimately intertwined with its owner, Volkswagen, that nearly everything the Spaniards build has a more or less direct VW equivalent. In some cases that applies not merely to model ranges as a whole but to individual vehicles such as the Ibiza E Ecomotive reviewed here, which is mechanically almost identical to the Polo BlueMotion.
Both cars use the same 74bhp 1.2-litre TDI three-cylinder turbo diesel engine, a five-speed manual gearbox with ratios chosen more for fuel economy than for performance, low-rolling resistance tyres, a start/stop system and various aerodynamics tweaks to help the body slide more easily through the air. (Why - in all low-CO2 models, not just the Ibiza - are these tweaks not engineered into the basic car right from the start? Perhaps one day they will be.)
Similar methods produce similar results. The SEAT and the Volkswagen have the same combined fuel economy figure of 80.7mpg, and although the Polo is officially better when it comes to CO2 emissions (91g/km versus 92g/km) this makes no difference to the amount you'll have to pay in Vehicle Excise Duty, because you won't be paying any at all.
Of course, despite the close relationship between them, the Ibiza E Ecomotive is much more than just a Polo BlueMotion with different badging. The two cars look quite different, for a start, and I'll leave it to you to decide which you think more attractive. The Ibiza is also significantly cheaper. There are two models, called S and SE (the "E" in E Ecomotive having nothing to do with trim levels but implying super-special greenness) and even the more expensive of them costs £800 less than the five-door BlueMotion.
At over £14,000 it's still not cheap for a memorably slow supermini which doesn't have a premium badge and takes nearly 14 seconds to get from 0-62mph, but it does look more financially appealing than the Polo. Then again, for £3000 less you can have the 70bhp 1.2-litre petrol Ibiza which has roughly similar performance and still costs nothing to tax in year one, and only £90 annually after that.
But that's another argument altogether. The fact that the E Ecomotive is cheaper than the equivalent Polo makes it slightly easier to bear the considerable amount of engine noise that comes into the cabin. Three-cylinder diesel cars from the Volkswagen Group aren't quite as thunderous as they once were, but they are still among the loudest vehicles on the market from the perspective of the occupants, and it seems odd that very little has been done over the years to sort this.
Another point in favour of the E Ecomotive is the way it drives. The Polo BlueMotion rides and handles very well, but I would suggest - admittedly without having driven both cars over the same route on the same day - that the Ibiza is better still. Of course it helps that there's not enough power to give the chassis much to think about, but even at that you can have an awful lot of fun with this thing. It also has more spirit to it than another sub-100g/km rival, the Vauxhall Corsa ecoFLEX.
In other news, the Ibiza hasn't been tested by Euro NCAP since the crash test rating system was altered in 2009, but before then it did score five, four and three stars for adult occupant, child occupant and pedestrian protection respectively, and no other car ever gained more stars than that. As with most other superminis, visibility is grim, especially at the rear, and there isn't a great deal of room for back-seat passengers, but the luggage capacity of 292 litres is all but class-leading, and beaten only by the 295 litres of the Ford Fiesta. If you want to save a few hundred pounds and don't intend to carry anyone in the back except on very rare occasions, there's a three-door SC Ibiza with exactly the same technical specification which has the same fuel economy and CO2 figures.
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