It is now 60 years since Seat’s first car rolled off the assembly line at the company’s Zona Franca factory in Barcelona. On 13 November 1953, the 1400 – “an elegant and luxurious saloon designed in the spirit of the most popular American sedans of the ’50s” – went on sale for 121,875 pesetas (the equivalent of €41,735 today).
The rear-wheel drive 1400 was powered by a front-mounted, water cooled 44 PS engine and came equipped with a four-speed manual gearbox. Seat initially produced five cars per day, built by a workforce of 925 employees, and one decade later – when production of the 1400 ended – had sold a total of 98,000. Over the past six decades, Seat has built more than 16,000,000 vehicles, including the iconic 600 and more recent Leon.