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Seat 1970 - 1979


After the estate car, various 124-coupe models were brought onto the market. The exports had risen tenfold and together with the production for the local market, this made Seat the biggest Spanish enterprise. They even started to get involved in motor racing.

With the appearance of the front-wheel drive 127, they brought another top-seller onto the market. They were thinking about their own technical development center, even about going their own way with the construction of cars that were, up to then, taken over from Fiat. After 1973, the quickly growing production of the 127 replaced the somewhat technically outdated 600. Indeed, 800.000 600s were built.

Seat Spanish Rallye-Champion 1973

In the meantime, with 2 million poduced cars and with a turnover of almost a billion, Seat had become the eighth biggest manufacturer in Europe. A factory was bought in Pamplona, also a central parts-warehouse and a component production works near to Barcelona. For the first time, with the four-door 127, a Seat own-development was introduced.

It's hardly conceivable, that the production of 5 cars a day in 1950 had grown to 1.900 per year in 1974. Then the crude-oil price-crisis struck, Seat, with it's mainly smaller cars, was not hit as badly as other manufacturers were. Indeed, with the 132 Diesel, a mid-range motor car was further developed.

Seat has had a longer experience with Diesel engines in the motor car, they had already been installing Diesel engines from other manufacturers in the Seat 1500 (widely known as the Milquiniento taxi). Although the model name would suggest it, the 124 D, which appeared in 1976, had nothing to do with Diesel technology. In the meantime, there is also the slightly larger 131.

At that point 3 million cars had been built. Seat is protected on the Spanish market by high import duties. However, to push the export, e.g., to other EU countries, this regulation must be gradually broken down. In 1979, all together 4 million Seats had been produced, of that number, 1 million were 127s. 11/12


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