SEAT
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SEAT
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| Owned by | Volkswagen (Germany) |
| Introduction | Volkswagen
received the troublesome Spanish car maker from Fiat in the mid-80 `s. In
the Fiat-era, SEAT was using its cheap labour to produce low price cars
with poor build quality even worse than Fiat. Volkswagen spent many years
and money into SEAT to upgrade its build quality and image. After struggling
for more than a decade, SEAT has eventually started to shine. The Toledo,
although actually engineered by VW and built in Belgium, gave SEAT a much
upmarket image - VW is hoping to establish a young and exciting image for
the Spanish subsidiary and position it against Alfa Romeo. The facelifted
Ibiza is the second act - well done.
However, it must be pointed out that the platform sharing policy gives SEAT (as well as Skoda) very limited space for developing its cars. Most R&D works are done in Germany by Volkswagen or Audi s engineers. That s not bad, as SEAT has never shown any engineering talent.
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| Sales figure | It is a little bit complicated because SEAT s plants also produce Polo and Sharan for VW while the latter s Belgium plant builds Toledo for SEAT. During 1998, SEAT sold 547,000 cars but produced only 500,500 cars. |
| Location | Barcelona, Spain. |
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Toledo