SEAT are a fascinating company. Chart the Spanish firms history back over the decades and their CV is rich with an astonishing variety of automotive offerings, the majority of which started out in life wearing Fiat badges. However, in the 1980’s SEAT split from Fiat and went on a marketing rampage that saw their profile rising spectacularly, and it was this little red car you see above that did most of the fighting. As an amusing exercise, before sampling the latest Ibiza FR 140 (stay tuned, folks…) I thought I’d experience where SEAT had come from before sampling where they’re going. Dust off your Global Hypercolor T-Shirt, I’m driving back to 1988. If I was to use the Ibiza’s exhaust pipe as a drinking straw, the pressure I would need to exert to achieve any kind of Pepsi throughput would be vast, to the point of muscle strain and lasting discomfort. The Ibiza farts its delightfully flatulent tune through a pipe narrower than a Roman nostril, and that’s one of the many defining features that remind you that you’re looking at a car from the past. The tyres, too, in 145/70 flavour, are space-saver narrow, lending the Ibiza a gangly posture akin to Bambi doing the splits when viewed dead ahead. The trend for ever wider, lower-profile tyres on even the most powerless of cars had not yet caught on in ’88. But the rest of the whole is broadly free of such time-specific quirks. It’s a Giugiaro shape, which helps, and it’s one of The Great Man’s better production ones with a well judged balance between glass area, overhangs, height and proportion. It’s fuss-free without looking barren, it’s conventional without looking too bland. This was important for SEAT. The immediate predecessor to the Ibiza, the Rondo, still bore visible scars from starting out as a humble Fiat Ritmo. The Ibiza was SEAT moving on, and moving on with confidence. At the time of launch the Ibiza made the Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall/Opel Nova/Corsa and VW Polo look like they had come from another era, which they had. The same thing goes for the interior. Before the 1990’s came and everybody went all follow-my-leader, there were still some highly individual dashboard designs coming out. Witness the Fiat Tipo DGT with its louvred, slotted dashboard and slinky digital instrumentation. I mean, it wasn’t really of much practical value, but it was at least interesting. The Seat Ibiza dashboard was unmistakable, too, with two batches of sliding switches jutting from either side of the dial-pack so all the minor controls were within reach and easily visible at all times. In operation they feel pretty horrible, to be honest, but that’s almost immaterial. That they work at all is pretty good going for an affordable car after twenty seven years. Mind you, this car is owned by SEAT UK, and so it would be unforgivable if anything didn’t work. It would also be somewhat frowned upon of anything should break on my watch, a thought which was constantly with me as I moved on to taking it for a spin. I immediately stalled, but I don’t think anybody was paying attention, so I got away with it. Then I couldn’t find first gear, then I struggled to find the clutch biting point, but eventually and with a good deal of excitable underbonnet thrashing and with no grace whatsoever, I moved off. Now, I’ve driven a healthy assortment of different cars and with diversity of experience comes an ability to readily adapt from the characteristics of one car to those of another. Despite all that, though, with the Seat Ibiza, though I felt I almost needed to re-learn everything I knew. This car was radically different to anything I’d ever experienced before, as unique an experience as any Nissan GT-R. The steering is unsurprisingly free of power-assistance and works via a plastic wheel of galactic proportions. It’s geared in such a way as to be usable at all speeds; a bit laborious when parking but rather more compliant once you gather speed. When you’re just ambling about and not making any dynamic demands whatsoever, It’s similar in feel to that of my fiancé’s Peugeot 306. Get even slightly carried away, though and you’ll be enveloped in a maelstrom of chaos and alarm. The overall feel of this car is completely dictated by those comically slim tyres, which help to make understeer available for all at even the most gentle of speeds, a tragedy really because the initial handling signs are good. Of course, the workaround for this is to drive the car as if it was what it is; a twenty-six year-old car. Compared to its rivals back then the Ibiza was no more a frenzied tyre-scrubbing understeerer than much of its competition. The fact is that we have all come to expect so much more from our cars since this one was new. Such is this car’s propensity for ploughing on straight ahead I slowed down rather a lot and got back to plodding around. The brakes, handily, are a good point- not (at all) powerful but with so much feedback through the pedal you could be almost be acting on the disc’s surface yourself using the sole of your shoe. That said, heat rapidly overtakes feel and pretty soon, after a few bouts of running noisily and perilously wide through demanding downhill curves, they felt stone dead. There’s almost as much feel in the accelerator pedal as there is in the brakes- linked mechanically as it is to a conventional throttle under a dainty little carburettor. The front of this Ibiza plays host to 903cc of throbbing power, 44 Spanish horses worth. Not many, but a good match for the braking capabilities and that modest capacity for carrying speed through corners. It’s a game, if noisy little unit and screams its intents determinedly. Point it at the crest of a hill and it’ll take it on with the exhaust note hardening noticeably as the engine girds its loins. It’s at that precise moment that my earlier misadventures with the clutch return to haunt me. I had hit the hill in third gear, which turned out to be wildly optimistic. A downchange was required quick-sharp so I extended my clutch foot and stirred the gearstick, but all the gears seemed to have moved around. The gate layout made no sense at all, as if the ratios had swapped places in a mischievous game of musical chairs. Eventually, I hooked one, but it was fourth and the the engine gasped in panic. It was too much. The poor, breathless little car kangarooed to a breathless halt and I yanked on the handbrake, all too conscious that I was stuck, static, half way up a 20% incline and with much faster traffic presumably about to bear down on me any second. If the handbrake cable was to snap I’d be left to hilariously roll backwards to my doom. Fortunately, after a little more rummaging I found what seemed like it should be first gear, cranked the now semi-flooded engine and eventually slipped the clutch to hobble the remaining way up the hill, just in time for a rapidly approaching Jaguar F-Type driver to completely fill his trousers as he just about scrubbed off enough speed to avoid collecting us. I would assume that this was not how the Ibiza was when it left the production line. It’s very possibly been knackered by, oh I don’t know, a bunch of heavy handed motoring journalists who should have known better. So, what have I learnt from this whole Ibiza of the past experience? Well, not much, really. I really like the design, and the car in general, but it has to be admitted that the 1988 Ibiza is light years backwards from where cars are now. However, the same criticisms could doubtless be levelled at any number of competing vehicles from that point in space and time. I feel quite sorry for this little Ibiza, actually. It reminds me of those elderly airliners for whom air-traffic controllers have to make special allowances for; a DC-8 isn’t as quick from taxi to rotation as an A320, for example, so older crates have to be given a bit of extra breathing space. When driving the Ibiza at the edge of its low limits on a country road, you’ll find yourself getting seriously in the way of folk driving anything new at even moderate speeds. Chassis have developed so far, in virtually every car out there, that any comparison with the past is almost meaningless. Just as the arrival of the Pocket Calculator had profound effects on mental arithmetic, there is a whole generation now growing up with cars which grip and steer and accelerate on demand, without the brain having to be engaged. Sticking a recently qualified driver behind the wheel of an ’88 Ibiza, or any of many comparable machines, is likely to end very badly and quite messily. Our expectations of the level of performance that a car should be able to achieve have changed radically in a quarter of a century. Every now and again every motorist should be forced, by law, to drive something like this by way of a reality check. To recalibrate. To remind themselves just how remarkable even the most mundane modern car truly is. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the old Ibiza, but I’m so glad that progress has been made in so many necessary areas. After all, though I can often look to the past with fondness and nostalgia, I have no temptation to trade my 42” Sony Bravia for a 10” black and white. (Disclosure: SEAT UK and Newspress leant me their precious ’88 Ibiza and sent me away in it with absolutely no supervision. Now that’s a position of trust.)