It Looks Like SEAT’s Sticking Around, For Now At Least

Annual earnings report confirms “new investment” and updates for the current model range, but not much beyond that

21 Mar 2024

The saga of what’s going on with the SEAT brand rumbles on. Last year, we heard that the Spanish brand would likely be phased out in the coming years, at least as a mainstream car manufacturer, with parent company Volkswagen shifting focus towards the hugely successful Cupra brand that was originally pitched as a high-performance offshoot.

Then, at the beginning of 2024, SEAT and Cupra’s UK brand director Marcus Gossen hinted that that might not be the case after all, telling Auto Express that “we have exciting news coming for SEAT.”

We thought we might have heard more of that news at a press conference today where SEAT highlighted both its 2023 financial results and upcoming plans for both the SEAT and Cupra brands. While SEAT has remained fairly vague on its long-term plans, we do at least have confirmation that it’ll be sticking around for a while yet.

Following a year in which the two brands posted record results, investment into SEAT will see the brand launch “improved plug-in hybrid and fuel-efficient cars…until the end of the combustion era.” These include facelifts for the Ibiza supermini and Arona compact crossover next year, as well as overhauls for the VW Golf-based Leon hatchback and the mid-sized Ateca crossover.

SEAT and Cupra CEO Wayne Griffiths said: “We want to get the SEAT brand back to where it belongs, continuing the double-digit growth from last year with new investments in the brand and its models. We are also looking at what we can deliver in the electric world under the SEAT brand. When it comes to SEAT, I promise you that the best is still to come.”

Despite that, it seems that any completely new SEAT models – the last of which to be introduced was the fourth-generation Leon in 2020 – are a way off yet, and it’s also not clear what the brand views as “the end of the combustion era”.

Cupra, meanwhile, is set to gain two new models this year in the shape of the electric Tavascan and hybrid Terramar crossovers. It also confirmed its ambitions to enter the North American market by the end of the 2020s.

So, it might not be time to get out the hankies for SEAT just yet, but we’re still a little in the dark as to exactly where its future lies.

The first full sentence spoken by an infant Mike was a review of the ride quality of a Volvo 850. It was “Daddy’s car goes bumpy-bump on a bumpy road,” so would probably need proofreading a bit, but it was a start.