Seat
Seat S.A. is a Spanish automobile manufacturer, founded over 65 years ago in 1950.
In 1986, the German Volkswagen Group bought Seat from the Spanish government to become the owner and operator of this established marque.
How popular is Seat in the United Kingdom?
Since the VW takeover, the number of Seat cars on the roads in the UK has grown steadily to over 500k.
Marketing similar cars to different markets
Although the structure and engineering behind all of the Volkswagen Group’s cars are closely related, based on very similar systems and practices, VW has aimed Seat at a market that offers something a bit different to Audi and VW.
Seat: Affordable, youthful versions of established models
Given that the brands under the VW umbrella (not forgetting Skoda too) all carry similar architecture, what sets the Seat models apart from their counterparts is their character, price-point and their ability to deliver slightly sportier handling due to their tuning. When you think of Seat, you think fun. VW: solid. Skoda: value. And Audi is for the executive.
So despite all being very similar machines under the hood, VW has created each of them to sit in quite different marketplaces. The Leon, for example, will appeal to a different type of driver to the Octavia or the Golf (and the Audi A3) despite being almost the same car. The same goes for the Ibiza, the Arona and the rest of the models in the Seat range.