SEAT 1400

Start with what the SEAT 1400 is: a 4-door saloon / 5-door estate with 1,395 cc I4, built from 1953 to 1963, at the height of the post-war boom. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Dante Giacosa.

How it came about

The SEAT 1400 is a rear-wheel-drive four-door mid-size sedan built by the Spanish car maker SEAT between 1953 and 1963. It was the first model produced by SEAT, and the first car to be assembled at the firm's then-new plant located in Barcelona's Zona Franca zone.

The hardware

The engine is 1,395 cc I4. On the scales it comes to 1150 kg – 1250 kg. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual. The wheelbase is 265 cm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

Family and rivals

In the SEAT line-up the SEAT 1400 has a clear place: it handed the line to the SEAT 1500; the factory was Barcelona (Zona Franca), Spain. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Chevrolet Corvette, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. Its SEAT stablemates include the SEAT 124 and the SEAT 133.

Owning one today

There is no federal ownership record for the SEAT 1400 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.