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Boosted by making a profit a year earlier than scheduled, SEAT is looking to a major expansion of its range and volumes of models available. At the unveiling of the new Ibiza at the SEAT design centre in Matorell, near Barcelona, cheif executive Erich Schmitt said that his ambition for volkswagen’s spanish subsiduary ‘SEAT Motors’ was to grow from 413,000 cars produced in 2007 to 800,000 cars a year!
The new Ibiza will have to play a major roll in that expansion. The current Ibiza sold 143,000 last year the new model is expected to achieve 200,000 a massive increase.
Seat is also approaching dealers in the UK in a bid to increase advertising by offering to mach there spend if they spend at a pre-agreed level, eg if a dealer currently spends 4k a month on advertising SEAT want them to spend 6k a month the bar is set at 6 and SEAT will provide an additional 6k of advertising in there region. Quite an incentive to bolster advertising and potentially massivley increase sales.
The Seat Ibiza is the first car to be built on Volkswagens renewed AO platform which will also be used for the new Polo which is expected at the end of this year. It is lighter but also bigger than its predecessor - in fact, at 4.05m it is the biggest of the supermini class - but its marketing will emphasise SEAT’s new style and improved quality.
This is the first production model from the design cheif Luc Donckerwolke, who came to SEAT from Lambourghini, so perhaps it is not surprising that it has a more sporty character than the current Ibiza. Schmitt admited that he is a quality fanatic. He has applied Audi standards - he was previously responsible for purchasing at Audi - and chairs a meeting every morning at the Martorell factory to monitor quality.
The new ibiza goes on sale in the UK in Five door form in July 2008. The three door option to be called the ‘Sports Coupe’ will not be available until the Autum and may be presented at the London Motor Show, it was previewed at Geneva (as the Bocanegra concept car)
The ibiza will be the first car in its class to offer Volkswagens new seven-speed DSG dual-clutch gearbox and later this year will add the latest turbocharged 1.4 litre TSI engine to its line up of 1.2 and 1.6 variants. Diesel engines should follow.
Schmitt expects the near-doubling of SEAT’s volume to result from a wider range of products, modest increases in the Western European markets, big expansion in eastern Europe, and new ventures in South America and China.
He thinks it is especially important to gain leadership in the closely-fought Spanish comestiv market, where SEAT ended last year in third place behind Citroen and Renault. The UK was the best performing western European market in 2007, 5.8 percent up at 34,000 sales.
SEAT will launch three or four new models each year until 2012, so that its range will eventually extend from a mini-car derived from the VW up! concept to a replacement for the Alhambra MPV and a D-class luxury saloon model. The latter which is based on the Audi A4 architechture, will appear before the end of 2008.