Was there a Spanish car that existed before? Of course! If the Italians have the Fiat 500, Spain has their legendary car as well… the SEAT 600! Actually it has existed for so many years and yesterday was the 50^th birthday of this legendary Spanish car!

This vehicle placed Spain on wheels all by itself. I saw this car one time in a film - it looks so much like the Fiat 500. It doesn’t have parts like the VW spoiler but the SEAT 600 is very distinctive in its own little ways!

Yesterday, I was so happy to uncover more facts and updates about the SEAT 600! Thank heavens I browsed the pages of theautochannel.com, my favorite auto resource web site! In their article yesterday about the SEAT 600’s 50^th birthday, they have revealed some facts that we didn’t know about the 600… So here are 10 hidden facts about the legendary Spanish car - the SEAT 600!

10 things you didn’t know about the SEAT 600:

• One in every four cars on Spanish roads in 1971 was a SEAT 600
• Thanks to the song Mi seiscientos (My 600) with lyrics by Juan Aguirre and music by Chano Montes, this small car came to form part of Spanish folk tradition
• A 600 was the star of the film entitled Ya tenemos coche (We’ve got a car) directed by Julio Salvador in 1958; the car also played a major role in the Spanish television (TVE) series Plinio
• Caba, Gabor, Inauto, Milton, Nardo, Serra and Siata were just some of the coachbuilders who converted a standard 600 into a coupé or convertible during the 1960s. Later in the 80s Rany used a 600 chassis to create a buggy
• The ‘House of the 600’ in Barcelona’s Rosselló Street was the city’s most popular used-car salesroom. Its proprietor once remarked that one particular 600 changed hands there more than 15 times
• José Lacambra, a farmer from Huesca, converted his 600 into a tractor after running it for 100,000 kilometres. Another farmer did things the other way round, using half of a 600’s bodywork to make a cabin for his tractor
• In addition to nicknames like Seílla y Pelotilla, the 600 was also popularly known as the Ombligo (Bellybutton), the simple joke being that ‘everyone had one’
• In the 1970s, the Catalan artist Joan Vila Casas converted his 600 into a work of art on wheels which he called Autometria 600 – and continued to drive it for many years
• In 1972, six students from Madrid crossed Africa from north to south in three 600s. With hardly any changes or major modifications to their cars, they took four months to drive 30,000 kilometres through deserts, jungle and mudflats
• SEAT exported about 80,000 units of the 600, almost 10% of total production. Cars destined for export markets with the Fiat badge also bore the legend construzione SEAT