A sporty GBP7,000 city car and a GBP16,000 ‘soft roader’ are two key new Seat models expected to spearhead an ambitious plan to double sales to 800,000 cars a year in the next decade.
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Key details of Seat’s new strategy are expected to be rubber-stamped at a critical meeting of Seat’s 20 top managers next week, according to new boss Eric Schmitt, recently arrived from Audi.
Both the city car and soft roader are additional to the Volkswagen Passat-sized sedan and wagon announced last month, and due to be revealed at September’s Frankfurt motor show as the Bolero concept.
Neither the city car nor the soft roader are expected to get the final production go-ahead before the year’s end, but Seat sources are confident the cars will get the green light in 2008/9 for production around 2011/12.
Without them Schmitt’s carefully-considered expansion plan will have to be scaled back.
“We have been looking at where we have gone and where we are going in future and will make decisions next week,” said Schmitt.
Most interesting of the two new models is the cheap city car, which would be developed jointly with Skoda and VW and be the spiritual successor in Seat’s range to the Arosa.
Seat, however, is at pains to point out that the new city car will be a ground up design, rather than a short-platform VW Polo, the basis of the Arosa.
The city car will fill a slot below the new Ibiza, as it grows in size to become of the new breed of four metre long superminis.
Currently in the final production stage ahead of launch next year, the redesigned Ibiza is tipped to make its debut at Geneva in 2008. It will be the first new production Seat designed by Luc Donckerwolke, ex-Lamborghini.
For the sub-Ibiza city car, engines will be drawn from the VW Group parts bin with developments of the three-cylinder 1.2-litre petrol and 1.4 diesel engines used in the Fabia likely. A choice of three- and five-door body styles is expected.
Significantly, by adding together Seat, Skoda and VW production volume, there is volume of “at least 300,000 units and maybe more”, according to Seat R&D head Frank Bekemeier.
He says that sharing of key ‘modules’ such as engines, gearboxes, suspensions and electrical systems, plus minor parts like mirrors, can generate enough savings for each of the three affordable cars to have different sheet metal, rather than be differentiated just by bumpers, lights and body cladding. That’s a change that the benchmark Czech Republic-built Toyota/PSA city cars haven’t achieved.
All three will have to be built in a single factory, said president Schmitt, meaning a competition is likely between Seat and VW factories in Spain and Skoda in the Czech Republic.
The final shape of Seat’s soft roader is also in the melting pot, but the growing significance of the market means that the company can’t ignore it in future, Bekemeier said.
Seat’s new 4×4/SUV could take two different directions – either challenging models like the Toyota RAV4 or smaller models like the Kia Sportage.
That would mean either aligning itself with the VW Tiguan (a Toyota RAV4 rival) or Skoda’s short-platform, re-skinned version of the VW (also a Kia Sportage competitor).
“We don’t have those answers yet,” said Bekemeier, “but I can tell you we will have a model that satisfies Seat’s sporty, family values brand image.”
Julian Rendell
