The SEAT 600 – The Car That Changed a Nation
05 January 2024
It is a scenario familiar to many of us. You are casually scanning the eBay listings, gazing at the cars you cannot afford, when one vehicle metaphorically leaps out of the screen.
A SEAT 600 is now a rare machine in Spain, while in the UK, they are as common as an edition of Mrs Brown’s Boys that does not want to make you sell your television set. Not to mention the fact that it is the car that brought mobility to an entire country - “the car within reach of all Spaniards”.
And this is no exaggeration. Before SEAT -‘Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo’ - launched the 600 on the 27th May 1957, there was one car for every 3,000 citizens. At that time, the nearest equivalent to a Spanish ‘people’s car’ was the Biscúter, a 197cc one cylinder two-stroke device. SEAT’s first car was the 1950 1400 but that was a vehicle for the middle and upper-class private motorist, and government officials.
As with the 1400, the 600 was made under licence from Fiat. Its initial price was 67,000 ptas, at a time when the average per capita income in Spain was 18,472 pesetas. The advertisements promised, “With SEAT you will not have to suffer from the lack of living space because SEAT conceived its vehicles thinking about you and your entire family”. Of course, Fiat created the 600 in Turin, but uttering such statements might not have been wise in Franco-era Spain.
The prospective buyer would also have to provide the dealer with bank statements to prove their financial status and find a deposit of 20,000 pesetas before joining a four-year waiting list. As for colour choices, the factory rather than the buyer selected a shade of grey, white, green or beige. But within six years some 132,000 examples had departed the Zona Franco factory.
In 1963 SEAT launched the 600 D, with a 767cc engine in place of the original 633 cc unit and four years later they introduced an instalment payment plan. By the end of the decade the E version sported forward-hinged doors and the 600 constituted half of the cars on Spain’s roads.
The Fiat parent model ceased production in 1970, but SEAT made their versions until the 3rd August, 1973. The very last example to leave the factory bore the placard “You were born a prince, you died a king”.
Or, to cite another slogan - “SEAT has given ‘life’ to Spanish roads”.