SEAT 1400

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "SEAT 1400" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

SEAT 1400
SEAT 1400 A
Overview
Manufacturer	SEAT
Production	1953–1963
Assembly	Barcelona Zona Franca, Spain
Designer	Dante Giacosa
Body and chassis
Class	Large family car (D)
Body style	4-door sedan
Layout	front-engine, rear-wheel drive
Related	Fiat 1400
Powertrain
Engine	straight-4
Transmission	4-speed manual
Dimensions
Wheelbase	265 cm (104.3 in)
Length	424 cm (166.9 in)
Width	166 cm (65.4 in)
Height	153 cm (60.2 in)
Curb weight	1,150 kg (2,540 lb)-1,250 kg (2,760 lb)
Chronology
Successor	SEAT 1500

The SEAT 1400 was 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 car was a rebranded Fiat 1400, itself Fiat's first integrated chassis model.

Production started on November 13, 1953, carried out by an early workforce of 925 employees with a potential of 5 units produced per day; the first example carried the license plate 'B-87.223'. Initially, components were shipped as CKD kits from Italy and assembled by SEAT at their plant in Zona Franca, but in 1954 the Spanish-made parts content rose to a 93% proportion of the total in order to limit imports and to help the development of the almost non-existent Spanish supplier industry, thus fulfilling SEAT's assigned key role in the development of the Spanish economy as the national car maker of the post World War II Spain. In the next few years the model's production output would gradually increase, and by 1956 10,000 cars would be produced annually, with an average of 42 cars per day.^[1]

In 1963, when the car was replaced by the SEAT 1500, 82,894 examples covering four distinctively different versions of the 1400 had been produced.

The first SEAT 1400, offered between 1953 and 1955, incorporated a 1395 cc four-cylinder water-cooled Fiat engine with a claimed output of 44 bhp and top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph).