SEAT 800

The SEAT 800 is the four-door version of the SEAT 600, a small car that the Spanish maker SEAT built under licence from Fiat. It had no Italian counterpart, because no Fiat 600 was ever made with this body. The body was 180 mm longer than the ordinary 600 and the engines were the same. SEAT wanted a rival to the Citroën 2CV and the Renault 4, which both had four practical doors, and the coachbuilder Carrocerías Costa of Terrassa built a prototype in 1962. The official presentation was in June 1963 at the Barcelona trade fair, and series production ran from January 1964 to June 1967, with 18,200 units made at a slow pace because the bodies were prepared almost by hand. Few were seen on Spanish roads except as micro-taxis in cities such as Madrid, Bilbao and Valladolid, and only about 249 are thought to survive.