What's the news?

SEAT is bringing cylinder deactivation tech to its sporty Ibiza model and is celebrating the fact by giving us the new FR Edition - available now in three-door SC and five-door hatchback guises. You can also still have a non-Edition FR model, in Sports Tourer (ST) estate guise, which uses this fancy engine black magic.

Exterior

Designed to sit in the range above the existing FR cars, the FR Edition adds a few signature giveaways to its special status, such as red brake callipers, titanium-coloured 17-inch alloy wheels, matching coloured door mirrors and dark tinted rear windows, plus badging of course.

Interior

Red seatbelts and climate control are added for the FR Edition, and all new Active Cylinder Technology (ACT) FRs come with a manual gearbox. However, prices are down on the outgoing FR, SEAT saying all three variants are £1,115 cheaper than their equivalent predecessors. The SC FR is £15,320, the five-door is £15,870 and the ST is £16,570.

The FR Edition commands a £600 premium over the FR models, but it adds in £1,130-worth of extra equipment for that, so it's worth getting. It'll therefore cost you £15,920 as a three-door and £16,470 as a five-door hatch.

Mechanicals

SEAT calls this cylinder deactivation ACT, but you might also recognise it from the Audi range, where it is known as Cylinder-on-Demand. The 1.4 can switch from four cylinders to two, or back the other way, in less than 40 milliseconds, meaning the shift is imperceptible to the driver.

The 1.4 TSI engine shuts off cylinders two and three under both low revs and low torque scenarios, which of course has a beneficial effect on fuel economy and emissions - SEAT quotes a 12.2mpg average combined economy increase to the headline 60.1mpg figure, with CO₂ down from 139- to 109g/km. This sees the ACT FR and FR Edition cars drop into VED Band B, meaning it's now just £20 a year to tax them, a saving of £110 on the old car. BIK taxation also falls from 20- to 14 per cent, while SEAT says you can save up to one litre of fuel for every 60 miles of careful urban driving you can enact.

The 140hp ACT TSI engine replaces the old 150hp unit previously found in the Ibiza range, for both FR and FR Edition cars. Obviously, with a 10hp deficit, it does lose 0.2 seconds on the 0-62mph time compared to the outgoing car, at 7.8 seconds all out, but that's hardly an eternity and is more than balanced out by the money-saving the new ACT comes with.

Anything else?

The new SEAT Ibiza FR ACT and FR Edition models are on sale now, for first deliveries in early June.

Matt Robinson - 8 Apr 2014