The SEAT Fórmula is a 2-door roadster from SEAT, built from 1999, when airbags, anti-lock brakes and Japanese build quality became the world standard. Under the bonnet: 2.0 L 20-valve Turbocharged I4. Erwin Leo Himmel drew it.
Where it came from
The SEAT Fórmula is a rear-wheel-drive mid-engined roadster concept car developed by the Spanish carmaker SEAT initially aimed at limited car production. Designed at the Volkswagen Group's Design Center Europe at Sitges near Barcelona a facility jointly owned by Volkswagen, Audi and SEAT, it was penned by a team directed by Erwin Leo Himmel into which participated the Lotus Elise designer Julian Thomson exposing the design language of the future models of the brand. The name Fórmula itself derives from the brand's heritage from the past, as a reminding of the creation of the Spanish Fórmula Nacional race tracks back in the 1960s, when SEAT started its implication in motorsport activities.
The first concept for the car built by the Turinese company Stola was shown at the 1999 Geneva Salon international de l' auto, featuring a water-cooled 2-litre 20-valve turbo four-cylinder 240 hp engine which was riding onto an aluminium chassis weighing almost 900 kg. Its 20-inch light alloy wheels (7.5 J × 20" front and 9 J × 20" rear) were fitted on 205/45 R20 front and 255/35 R20 rear tires and mounted onto an independent suspension system consisting of Formula One-style wishbones in front and horizontally mounted dampers rear system. The combination of the very light chassis with the powerful engine (performing a maximum output of 240 bhp peaking at 5800 rpm and a maximum torque of 295 Nm between 2100 and 4800 rpm) and the six-speed sequential Sportronic electro-hydraulic semi-automatic gearbox, both deriving from SEAT's rally cars, gave the SEAT Fórmula the ability to reach 0–100 km/
Under the skin
Power comes from 2.0 L 20-valve Turbocharged I4. It weighs 900 kg. It shifts through a 6-speed sequential semi-automatic. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 2523 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Turin, Italy. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the BMW Z3, the Honda CR-V, the Toyota Tacoma — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the SEAT catalogue sit the SEAT 124 and the SEAT 133.