Built on the platform of the Seat 127 with a body designed by the Italian Aldo Sessano and manufactured by Inducar in Terrassa, the Seat 1200 Sport was a four-seater coupe with surprisingly modern lines, both on the outside and in the passenger compartment. Fast, especially with the later adoption of the 1,430 engine, exclusive, since only 18,000 units were manufactured, and very original due to its sporty approach, the 1200 Sport became a myth of Spanish motoring.
With him we begin this summer series of popular classics that we will publish every Saturday. If you are looking for a model of this type, go to our section of classic cars.net
The history of the Seat 1200 Sport starts from the collaboration between Seat and Carrocerías Costa, a bodybuilder that had previously assumed the production of non-conventional Seat models, such as the Seat 800 (the long wheelbase and 4-door version of the 600), the Costa van, similar to the Italian Siata Formichetta, and the 4-door Seat 850, another local Seat creation approved by Italy and subcontracted to Costa for the bodywork.
When the order for the 850 arrived, Costa agreed to supply 120 cars a day to Seat, a figure that, with the facilities it had, especially the painting facilities, was very difficult to assume. Then, Enrique Costa, owner of Carrocerías Costa, invited the workers to collaborate financially in the creation of a new company under a social cooperative regime and with new facilities to face the new contract. Thus, the Industrial Bodyworks company (Inducar) was born, which attended to the 850 contract but which, to ensure its future viability, needed a new project, of course at the hands of Seat.
The replacement for the 850 was the Seat 127, a modern car with a front engine and traction that Inducar saw as the ideal basis for a series of proposals that they presented to Seat. The Terrassa company proposed to make a 4-door 127 (its great specialty) but Seat had already planned to manufacture that car for itself and for Fiat itself, so it was rejected. Inducar also proposed to build a van based on the 127 and, as a third project, the idea of a sports car was launched. The latter was the one that stuck.
Antonio Amat, technical director of Inducar, presented a first model of the car and Seat liked the idea, so Amat contacted the Italian designer Aldo Sessano to finish off the idea. Sessano, a former Fiat design director with his own studio, presented a spectacular bodywork with sharp edges and rectilinear contours that stood out, above all, for its synthetic, wrap-around bumpers painted in black. These bumpers, which replaced the traditional steel ones with rubber bumpers, had become fashionable in Europe with the launch of the Renault 5 and Sessano integrated them into the car’s line as a defining element. These black bumpers gave it its nickname “Bocanegra”.
Sessano recycled a project for the German brand NSU, keeping some design elements such as the false air vents on the rear wings that would have been functional in the NSU since the project was for a rear-engine car. The rear exhibited what is called a “truncated tail” that is, with a sharp fall, but it was difficult to place the rear window, the trunk lid and the huge bumpers in that area. In the end, after many discussions and different proposals, Seat accepted the final version.
Pieces of different origins
The Inducar engineers created a frame where parts of the Seat organ bank fit together without problems and without the need for costly adaptations. The monocoque was similar to that of the 127 but, to increase torsional rigidity, the rear side windows and the rear window were glued to the steel base, thus contributing to increased rigidity.
The technical decisions were made at Seat. The brand considered different proposals for the engine, from the 903 cc 4-cylinder of the 127 to the 1.6 and 1.8 liter twin-shaft engines of the Seat 124 Sport. The most modest was discarded due to its limited performance and the other two due to a cost problem, so that, finally, the 1.2 liter engine of the Seat 124 was chosen, which was rotated to mount it in a transverse position and thus take advantage of the 127 four-speed gearbox.
Then the development process began and decisions about industrialization were made. Inducar would stamp and weld the monocoque and send it to Seat to paint and assemble the car
The Seat Sport 1200 was presented to the press at the end of 1975 in Granada and surprised both its attractive exterior aesthetics and its sophisticated interior design, also the work of Aldo Sessano who drew a one-piece gray instrument panel where the different elements of the instrumentation.
The seats, which looked very good, were small and the rear seats were narrower than those of the 127. The trunk had a small lid (the possibility of a tailgate was not considered due to the aforementioned issue of the contribution of the rear window). to the rigidity of the model) and it was not very big (225 litres). In addition, it carried the spare wheel inside, located vertically.
An expensive and exclusive car
The long development process, expensive manufacturing (two different plants were involved in it) and Seat’s willingness to make the customer pay for the exclusivity of what was its first self-designed vehicle made the 1200 Sport an expensive car. When it came onto the market, at the beginning of 1976, it cost 295,000 pesetas at the time and was the most expensive model of the brand, surpassed only by the Seat 132.
Despite this, it was a successful car. The 67 hp delivered by the engine, combined with its lightness (805 kilos), gave the “Bocanegra” some interesting performance (160 km/h top speed) in part thanks to much better aerodynamics than its square front gave. to understand. It was also an agile in curves, very manageable and that provided very good sensations at the wheel with direct and precise steering and good braking with front discs.
The gearbox, however, was prone to breakdown, so Seat decided, in 1977, to use the one from the Seat 128 3-door launched that same year. A new twin-barrel Weber carburettor was also fitted to the 1200 engine (the previous one was a Bressel) and the range was extended with a second, more powerful version, fitted with the famous 1,430 cc Seat engine. As a result, the car passed to be called simply Seat Sport with the addition of 1200 or 1430 depending on the engine equipped. The new engine improved the speed little (165 km/h.) but achieved better results in acceleration and recoveries in third and fourth gears since the propellant was much more elastic than the 1,200.
A rival at home
The Seat Sport was manufactured until 1979 and was sold until the first months of 1980. In 1977 a direct rival appeared in the range of Seat itself with the launch of the Seat 128 3 doors, the coupe version of the Italian model of the same. The 128 was not as original, but it was much more practical since it was longer, the rear seats were larger and, above all, it had a tailgate that guaranteed more comfortable access to a larger boot.
Also, the 128, which had the same engines as the Sport, was slightly cheaper. 19,332 units of the Seat Sport were manufactured and it was one of the first Seats to be sold in Europe. By the way, Inducar stopped manufacturing cars in 1979. Converted into a metal elements construction company and under the name of Egacomet (Egarense of Metallic Components), the cooperative created to manufacture the 1200 Sport definitively went bankrupt in 2003.