• Surprisingly spacious
• Flexible, well-shaped boot
• Not the brightest interior, though

How much space is there?

The Ibiza is a roomy small car. There’s enough space for four adults to fit in comfort, with a generous amount of headroom unless you’re really tall. Most will be perfectly comfortable, though, however a passenger in the middle seat might feel the squeeze slightly. Best left for the kids, that one.

It’s easy to access due to the five-door body style. There’s decreasing demand for three-door superminis, so the Ibiza is only available in this form, which is useful for small families regularly using the rear doors. Even opting for the sunroof doesn’t eat into roof space, plus it adds some extra light into the cabin, which is very welcome, as the interior can feel quite dark.

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Boot space and storage

Boot space is a very generous 355 litres, which can be expanded to 823 litres by folding the rear seats down.

With the seats up, that boot space is actually more than a 2004-2005 VW Golf offered, which shows how much cars are growing up. It’s a square and usable size, though, however the loading lip is quite high.

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The height can be adjusted on cars fitted with a variable boot floor, which gives a level loading area when the rear seats are folded down.

Is it easy to park?

Visibility is good, and the steering is light enough to manoeuvre in and out of tight spaces with ease. The Ibiza is a compact car, so very few drivers will feel daunted by its size. On the road, it’s very easy to place with good visibility, while parking is a doddle as well due to flat sides and plenty of windows.

Parking sensors and cameras can be added to help, but with light steering and short overhangs, it’s very easy to judge the size of the Ibiza when parking in tight spots.

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Safety

• Plenty of safety equipment as standard
• Five stars from Euro NCAP
• Extra assistance tech can be added

Euro NCAP awarded the SEAT Ibiza with a top five-star rating. As standard, it comes with a suite of airbags, electronic stability control and emergency brake assist, tyre pressure monitoring, hill hold control and Front Assist. That’s SEAT’s name for autonomous emergency braking.

There’s also a multi-collision braking system which holds on the brakes in the event of a rear-end impact, while automatic warning lights flash under hard braking or an incident.

Few safety extras can be added other than adaptive cruise control, so you won’t be able to specify things like blindspot monitoring and lane-departure warning like you can on some rivals.