Spanish Car Brands
Tags: Spain | Spanish cars
Most car brands in Spain aren’t too famous outside of their home country, and they are, therefore, mostly focused on selling in Spain. The car industry in this part of the world is fairly old, dating as far as late 19th century. Regardless, there aren’t too many automotive Spanish manufacturers right now, nor were there a lot of them in the past. Spanish car industry is relatively undeveloped and unexplored.
SEAT
Founded: May 9, 1950
Founder: Instituto Nacional de Industria
Headquarters: Municipality of Martorell, Spain
Parent organization: Volkswagen Group
Website: www.seat.ua
SEAT is by far the most successful Spanish car manufacturer in history. They’ve been established by the Franco’s government after the war, and their car enterprise dominated the peninsula ever since. Most modern Spanish cars were produced or developed by SEAT. In 1986, the company was acquired by Volkswagen.
Tauro
Founded: 2010
Founder: Several Spanish and British businessmen
Headquarters: Valladolid, Spain
Owner: Pedro J Santos
Website: facebook.com/TauroSportAuto/
Tauro (a combination of ‘toro’ + ‘taurus’, means bull either way) is a producer of high-performance luxury cars. This company was started in 2010, and they’ve so far created four V8 cars using the American parts and some British technology. These cars have been fairly successful and known to be of high quality.
Santana
Founded: 1956
Defunct: 2011
Headquarters: Linares, Spain
Successor: Santana Motor, S.A., en Liquidación
Website: www.santana-motor.es
Santana has formerly been a very large company with an international focus, one of the few companies of such caliber Spain ever had. Like SEAT, they appeared in 1956 and are responsible for many SUVs, as well as compact and super-compact cars. You can still find these cars all over Spain, but they unfortunately went bankrupt in 2011.
Minor brands
There aren’t too many big automotive brands in Spain, but there are quite a few smaller manufacturers as well as now-dead brands.
Spania GTA
Founded: 2010
Founder: Domingo Ochoa
Feadquarters: Valencia, Spain
Parent: GTA Motor Competición
Website: www.spaniagta.com
Spania GTA is a fairly successful F1 racing team. One of their side projects was the building of a powerful Spain-produced sports car fir for trek. In 2010, they came up with Spano, which turned out to be very effective on trek, but not too popular.
Hurtan
Founded: 1991
Founder: Juan Hurtado González
Headquarters: Santa Fe, Spain
Owner: Juan Hurtado González
Website: www.hurtan.com
Hurtan is a modern producer of retro cars from Granada, and they’ve been at it since 1991. They have released seven models so far, each has been surprisingly successful for such a niche product. The cars include sports and luxury models.
Aspid
Founded: 2003
Founder: Ignacio Fernández Rodríguez
Headquarters: Reus, Catalonia, Spain
Owner: Ignacio Fernandez
Website: www.aspidcars.com
Aspid is working on open-wheel cars (like the racing F1 models) fit for general usage since their birth in 2003. They’ve currently created two cars: a 2009 IFR and a 2013 Invictus – both look like F1 cars and have very powerful engines.
Hispano-Suiza
Founded: June 14, 1904
Ceased operations: 1936
Founder: Marc Birkigt
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Parent organization: Safran
Website: www.hispanosuizacars.com
HS is one of the oldest car brands in Spain, with the rich history that starts back in 1904. Before the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) they mostly made luxury cars. Afterwards, they switched to aircraft, although in 2019 the brand decided to give cars another shot.
Tramontana
Founded: ~2005
Founder: Atelier Tramontana
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Website: www.tramontanacorp.com
Tramontana is just one car produced by the company with the same name in 2007. It’s an expensive F1-style model. It doesn’t look significant, but the car is an important milestone for the car industry in this country – it’s reanimating.
Abadal
Founded: 1912-1923
