Walter de Silva became the head of Centro Stile, the design department of Alfa Romeo in 1986. The Alfa 164 stands for the new form language introduced there. The car excited looking in Europe, also the following appearing type 147.

VW was attracted to him and Ferdinand Piëch achieved that he worked for the VW Group from 1999 onwards. First, he was to improve the appearance of seat vehicles, later, the full VW design was subordinated to him. And so, in cooperation with Steve Lewis, who was responsible for the exterior design at Seat, the Seat Tango was developed.

It (unfortunately) remained a concept car, but it was well noticed at the IAA in Frankfurt 2001. A successful two-door roadster, for then conditions sufficiently motorized with the turbo-charged five-valve engne from the VW/Audi. 'Tango' was not its project name, but 'Tanga' seemed to be a bit too offensive to the management board.

Just at the time Bernd Pischetsrieder, once head of BMW, was responsible for Seat. However, his dreams of a serial production of the Tango can not be realized. At the time Seat was anything but a pattern daughter, deep in the red numbers. Ferdinand Piëch wrote in his memoir that one had employed twice as many people as one really needed. The products were faulty and bad for sale.

A step towards the new design already was the Seat Fórmula, presented in Geneva 1999. At least since the appearance of the Tango the whole design of Seat has changed significantly. 01/17