No completely new Seats for the time being
The last time Seat introduced a new model was four years ago. For the time being, there is nothing completely new in the pipeline, but various facelifts are coming. We already get to see some of those of the Ibiza and Arona.
The Volkswagen Group’s attention for the Spanish branch has been mainly focused on Cupra for some time, but that does not mean that it is slowly letting Seat bleed to death. There is, however, less major news in the Seat barrel. The existing line-up should continue to lead the way for quite some time. Seat now announces that various innovations are planned to keep the models up to date as much as possible.
To start with, there is a refresher in the pipeline for the youngest Seat, the Leon. Sometime in the coming weeks the curtain will rise on the facelifted Cupra Leon, but the Seat version will also appear in a new form sometime in the coming months. It remains to be seen whether the Seat Leon will have a significantly different front, just like the Cupra Leon. For the time being, Seat talks about technical and technological innovation.
The other Seats are a lot older and a full-fledged facelift is planned for some of them. For example, the Seat Arona and Seat Ibiza will be facelifted again in 2025. You can see it in the photos above. In any case, they both get new lighting and completely new shaped and arranged grilles. Those two related compact Seats date from 2017 and were both given a refresh in 2021. Seat is currently silent about the Ateca and Tarraco in all languages. The Ateca was facelifted in 2020 and, at eight years old, is the oldest Seat currently available. It is possible that this will completely come to an end sometime in the coming years. The Tarraco has been running since 2018 and has never been significantly facelifted.
Electric future Seat
It remains difficult to say what will happen to Seat in the long term. Rumors have been going around for years that Seat will sooner or later become a thing of the past as a car brand and that Cupra should mean everything in that area. Still, CEO Wayne Griffiths is keeping the door open to an electric future for the brand. Once again, Griffiths reiterates that the race is certainly not over for Seat. “We want to bring the Seat brand back to where it belongs, continuing last year’s double-digit growth 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 .As for Seat, I promise the best is yet to come.”
The Volkswagen Group appears to possibly see a role for Seat in the long term as a provider of relatively affordable EVs. For the time being, however, the strategy is to freshen up the current offering. Seat will continue to supply ‘enhanced fuel cars and plug-in hybrid cars until the end of the fuel engine era’.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl