This is a little page I've made to list the modifications I've done to my car and also give some information on it.

It's a 2003 (52 Reg) Seat Ibiza TDI Sport. There are four models available in the Sport range at the time and this was the fastest, top of the range with the 130BHP 6-Speed turbodiesel engine.

The first photos to show are below, these were taken from the Auto Trader website when I first found the car, I live just outside Glasgow and travelled roughly 430 miles to Guildford to pick the car up.

 

 

And...

 

 

When I first picked the car up it was 100% standard. It had 46,000 miles on the clock and was in mint condition, the Ovni Yellow paint finish looked fantastic - having Full Seat Service History driving the car home was a dream ... and we got an average of 57 MPG showing on the On-Board computer!

The images below are also from the Auto Trader advert, although not great quality you can see some of the interior comforts, climate control, onboard computer, CD player, sport seats, full electrics.

Sometime between 2003 and 2004, Seat removed some interior comforts from the Sport model - mines has been lucky enough to have them in place.

In the later models, the Centre Sunvisor, Boot light and Volt meter and Oil temp gagues were removed - you can see these in place in my car below.

 

 

And...

 

 

So... after a long drive home I got to give the car a good inspection and then decided I was happy with it. I bought this car originally in agreement with myself that I would not modify it, but that didn't last long.

The first modification to the car was my private registration... I had this on my previous car (2002 Seat Toledo) my parents bought my it for my 21st Birthday - after a few different styles of plates I finally agreed I was happy with the German style pressed plates, these can be seen below.

 

 

So, I got my private registration on the car and had a look to see if there was anything else that would be worth changing without costing too much money (That idea didn't last long...) and I noticed that the wing-mirrors on the car are just plain black, not colour coded.

So, off came the plastic covers of the wing mirrors and with colour coding in mind I could help but notice the FR models have silver mirrors... I popped into Seat and got a set of covers for the mirrors and fitted them - I was quite happy with the finish - a photo of the wing mirrors is below.

 

 

With the silver wing mirrors in place the basic look was lost, so that was that - the door handles are also not colour coded but that does not really bo ther me for the meantime.

So the next mod to the car was actually very simple - on my old car, the Toledo - I had fitted a chrome grill kit to it and I thought as the newer Ibiza's have the centre peice already there I should maybe fit that also - so off to Seat I went, one chrome grill kit please and then before I know it the car looked a bit like this...

 

 

After fitting the chrome grill kit I realised that the lighting the car produced, although very good for standard halogen bulbs were actually, well crap. I had an HID Xenon conversion kit fitted to the Toledo, it was a 6000K H7 fitment kit and I sold it after losing the Toledo ... I then realised the Ibiza uses the same fitment and got a set on eBay for a fraction of the price I paid two years before this for my Toledo... they have come down in price even more now... I strongly recommend fitting these.

Below are some photos of the HID kit fitted to the car, and the light they produce.

 

So yeah, now I'm sitting thinking "What else..." cause there is quite a list. At this point I was still keeping my mods suttle - well they still are but anyways at this point I done some maintenance on the car, the full 50K service was carried out and I also changed the window wipers. Once I replaced the rear I was not happy with its performance and looked at using the Polo Mk6 one as a substitute... I fitted a Polo one, done some trimming and that is now fitted and works a treat! A photo of the Polo wiper fitted to the car is below...

 

 

So at this point I was happy with the car, it was in perfect condition, it was running well as it just had it's service and with the new wipers fitted all was running smoothly... I took the Phatnoise Phatbox I had in my Seat Toledo - this is basically an MP3 player that is controlled through the cars original headunit. The headunit in the Ibiza isn't all that great but with this functionality added to it I'm more than happy with it. The headunit in the car uses the standard fit 8-Speaker sound system, so the sound is not all that bad.

I don't have a photo of the VW Phatbox fitted in the car, it's mounted onto the back of the rear seats and cable is run under the carpet discreetly through to the radio, what I do have though is a video of it in action in my car.

Click here to see the video, hosted on youtube.

The next modification to the car is again pretty cosmetic. The interior light on the Ibiza is very basic, the Toledo had a light with map reading buttons which was very bright - a similar light to that was supplied with the Ibiza on the 'SE' models - so I got the light from the SE model and popped that in - much better!

The next mod after this is one I didn't see myself going for, I soon realised how the FR and the Sport models are so alike, they are pretty much the exact same car - though the Sport was missing a few features, the first thing that I immediately noticed was the exhaust - the FR had a twin-tailpipe chrome exhaust, so I thought I'd go for something like this - in the end I went for an oval exhaust similar to the Cupra - this is a Cat-Back stainless steel exhaust I have fitted to the car now, a couple of photos of the exhaust is below.

 

The next change to the car after the exhaust was the fitting of some nice new alloy wheels. The wheel of choice for the car were SSW Mesh in 17". These are BBS-Style'd and have a two-peice appearance to them - so I fitted those to the car - unfortunately I only kept the alloy wheels on the car for a couple of months, I sold them onto a user of the popular Seat enthusiasts forum that I use and put my original 16" Sport wheels back on. Below are some photos of the car with the 17" SSW Mesh wheels fitted.

After removing the larger wheels from the car and selling them up, I gave the car a bit of a rest, focussed on cleaning the car for a while and made no modifications for a good few months and let it be, the modding soon continued though.

I moved back to a slight cosmetic mod to the car, at night the interior lights up red and looks nice and bright, the Cupra model has red trims showing on the switches for the heater vents, these are a direct swap with my current ones - so I popped them on. Some photos of the red switches here...

So the next couple of modifications I didn't get any photos inbetween. I bought a set of Evo Coilovers for the car and got them fitted, after fitting the new coilovers I also needed some new tyres for my Sport wheels - rather than looking for tyres I looked at wheels and tyres, as a couple of my alloys were needing a refurb - now this is why I love eBay... I got a set of brand new 16" Sport alloys off a facelift Sport with Dunlop tyres for £255! The tyres are worth that alone! So I now have new Sport alloys fitted, with the car nice and low on coilovers - see the below images for how it looks now.

The car looks a little bit lower in the back in the above photos - the front has been brought down more and has settled all over to sort that problem out.

The next mod that I done to the car is again cosmetic. The FR model has a slightly different front end to the Sport... infact the Sport shares the same grills as the basic 'S' models do. So I bought some grills off a lad on the enthusiasts forum and fitted those - I'm quite happy with the effect they give. When they came they had an 'FR' badge on them - but I soon removed that - some photos of the new grills are below.

The next two mods to the car are the latest. I fitted a Seat Sport Strut Brace which has helped improve the handling that little bit more, and I also fitted the rear lights from a Cupra model which has taken the red look away from the car. So the theme to the coloring of the outside of the car seems to now be Yellow/Black/Silver - it looks good! Below is a photo of the Cupra lights fitted to the car, excuse the dirty-ness!

So below are the last photos I took of the car tonight, they are a little blurred as I used my phone (K850i) to take them. But they show the car as it sits at the moment.

 

Another modification (I guess...) that I performed to the car recently was the fitting of a glovebox light. As standard Seat only fitted these to the 'SE' models and not the Sport (Weight reduction? I think not...) - a glovebox light isn't something you see often on a Mk4 Ibiza so some photos of it fitted are below.

And below, I have included another few photos - these show the current state of the interior of the car.

 

Another two slight modifications I made to the car which I have no photo of, a VW Flip key & aluminium tax disc holder.

Moving on from that I have made a few more updates to the car.  The Phatnoise Phatbox that I fitted from my Seat Toledo was a great peice of kit, however the original ALANA radio that comes with the Ibiza as standard wasn't all that great - so I decided to give the Phatbox a miss and get a nice aftermarket radio.  I picked up a nice deal with an almost new Alpine CDE-9828RB headunit, I have used Alpine radio's before and highly rate them - so in that went!

Shortly after fitting the Alpine headunit I was being a naughty boy and used my mobile phone without using my bluetooth headset.  If I'm honest the bluetooth headset done my head in, it got very hot and irritating after a little while so I tried to avoid using it... so this time I got caught at a set of lights with a phone to my ear, 3 points and a £60 fine later I decided to get a permanent bluetooth kit for my car, so I picked up a Parrot CK3100 and wired that in - very happy with it! :)

 

The next modification I made to the car was more of a de-mod if I'm honest.  I do a lot of miles in the car, some 500 a week so thats double the national average - the rough ride with the coilovers was starting to annoy me so I decided to sell them on and fitted some new suspension struts and springs.  The other modification I also done was swap wing mirror covers with a lad on the forum... He has my silver ones and I have his original yellow ones. At this point also my friend Alex bought me a couple of TDI badges for my Ibiza as a thanks for fitting HID's to his new Leon... I fitted those straight away!

 

At this point the modding once again took a little bit of a break as I moved into my first flat with my girlfriend and money had to go elsewhere, the next mod was a little subtle one once again, a gearknob from the Seat Ibiza Cupra TDI, it looks a lot better I think?

 

After this I had a look at another few modifications to the car, I was looking at getting a Custom Code remap which should take my car to somewhere between 170 - 180 BHP but the power wasn't something with the car I felt need improved - the looks were though... so I had a look at new bumpers!  Shortly after I had a facelifted front bumper and a Cupra rear bumper in my posetion... I got them sprayed and fitted and now the car is looking a lot better!

 

I was very impressed with the front and rear bumpers when fitted, I also decided to debadge the car as you can see above - I also took off the two extra badges that Alex bought for me as the unfortunately faded. :(

At the moment that is the latest with the car, the two extra little things I done were added fog lights to the front bumper, and had my exhaust polished up like new, extended out a little and re-aligned into the Cupra rear bumper as you can see below - I will be updating this page shortly with new photos.

One other thing I'll add... is feel free to join me and many other enthusiasts at our forums. The links for the forums are below.

SeatCupra.NET Forums

VAGOwners Forums