In the Driver’s Seat

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.