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What is it?

It’s the new Seat Exeo, which is also the previous-generation Audi A4.

The speed at which the Exeo has been created from the 2004 Audi A4 is reflected in its external make-up - the whole A4 production line was lifted from Germany and re-installed in Spain.

Aside from the new bonnet and boot lid, the front and rear light clusters are new, as are the bumpers and wheel designs.

I think fundamentally this is a good car.

The biggest issue is going to be with customer perception, down mainly to the "recycled" looks of this car.

That said, from SEAT's point of view it is a cheap and relatively easy way to make a car, and at the moment, this is what the motoring manufacturer need.

A classic own goal for the Volkswagen group? A decent car at a much cheaper price (perhaps?) than the lumpen succesor. Now we are all broke is having an Audi badge over a SEAT one really worth it when you can get a thoroughly good car built on an ex Audi production line. How will this affect A4 (and Passat) sales one wonders.

I think that this is a car that should not have been built and that is because of what it signals. European cars enjoy their specific high status because of their high level of sophistication, build quality and design (!). That is what is separating them from the "four wheel washing machines" manufacturers. And I think that we are able to make these great cars because of our rich history and specific mentality. And this is what we should continue doing and further develop. What this car is is something not very different from the Kia Ceed my friend bought. It may be well built and sophisticated but the Kia is not far away (tried and tested) and its gaining pace. If I look back in history there were a couple of manufacturers who started building certain models like the one above and they all said that they need a more conservative design for a broader spectre of people (Fiat Stilo and Vauxhall Vectra) but all of those cars did not sell well. Seat developed the stunning Altea and sold it well for a high price and that is the only way euro brands can survive.

Markusmorelli, I agree with your view of a European way of doing things. We aspire to more than washing machine makers and bland functionality. However, Seat is the sick child of VW Group. VW may sell it or close it down. Maybe unthinkable, given the 10%+ unemployment in Spain and the backlash by Spaniards against VW/German products/Germany. By the way, there was a school of thought that the lousy performance put up by the German football team against Spain in Euro2008 was part of a clever/necessary plan to stop the implosion of the Spainish economy/Spain itself, by buoying up morale and national pride as there was and is so much money at stake in the Spanish bubble property sector which if it all fails will in the end fall into the lap of Europe's larger banks, the European Central Bank and ultimately the German taxpayer, to bail it all out, and quite possibly the collapse of the whole euro project.

Fantastic! -- isn't this what Daewoo used to do? buy up the entire tooling line of a past its sell-by date car, reskin it and sell it cheap? (saving the odd 50 million development costs)

This will really massage the already well fed Audi drivers ego, like seeing a tramp in the street wearing a once smart but now worn out jacket and shouting for all to hear

'I gave him that! poor beggar!' 

Society aside, its a pretty decent car but for the sake of all the X-Type drivers that have suffered so much over the years with the "just a tarted up Mondeo innit?" persecution - should the Germans or Spanish be allowed to get away with it? I say for Queen and country no!

 

2nd thought.. why didn't the Chinese offer a good price for the line? ship it to Longbridge, slip on a classy Rover shell and knock em out cheap - ladies and gentlemen the classy, the quality, the affordable - Rover 900

The Apprentice:

Fantastic! -- isn't this what Daewoo used to do? buy up the entire tooling line of a past its sell-by date car, reskin it and sell it cheap? (saving the odd 50 million development costs)

Surely they, Daewoo, didn't buy anything. Weren't they owned by General Motors? and wasn't it an old version of the GM Europe Opel Kadett they assembled?

As to the Chinese setting up defunct model production lines at Longbridge, they seem to have their hands full with the ancient MG TF. The Chinese it would appear often prefer just to go ahead and copy, plagiarise, invariably German current models in China, like the Smart and X5. The whole Longbridge Rover/Chinese takeover has been and is a disaster. The promised volume car-making will never happen and the 1000+ acre site owner, property devlopment shark St.Modwen, have just announced they would rather sit on the land bank, so to speak, rather than sell it off at the current depressed values for housebuilding and redevelopment, in the vain hope that the prices will recover back to the 2007 bubble levels. Poor St. Modwen and its greedy backers. They're looking at multi-million pound losses and not an earthly of prices recovering. Ha ha ha! 

I don't know what all the fuss is about...SEAT has never been anything other than a badge engineering firm. As for AUDI, if there are actually Audi owners out there who have the nerve to be affronted by such an obvious piece of badge engineering, perhaps someone should point out to them that you can already buy half the AUDI range with a Skoda badge on the front at half the price. Audi's have been little more than rebodied Veedubs for decades. Did you people not know that?

While it is true that some Audis - the A3 and upcoming A1 - are based on VW front-drive platforms, the A4, A6 and A8 and various coupes and cabriolets over decades have always been built on Audi's unique and somewhat eccentric steel and aluminium platforms. The reason that the Exeo is interesting is that it's an Audi platform being used for the first time by a lower-rank maker. One thing I forgot to ask the SEAT bosses yesterday was what would have happened to old A4 line if it hadn't been shipped to Seat. Would it have been melted down? Mr Cart - you are quite right about the Spanish economy. My analyst contact assures me that sometime next year Seat will need a very major injection of cash....

For me this car is a mix of both good and bad....

Firstly - the good. SEAT dealers desperately need a broader product range to get enough volume to be viable. This car contributes to that. And it's a quality car, which pushes SEAT into a slightly more upmarket area where margins perhaps are a little more generous that flogging Ibizas

 And now, the bad. I think it really devalues the brand. Over the last 6 years, SEAT's cars have become distinctively styled, and have started to develop an image which is more than "VWs sold cheaper with slightly less soft-feel plastics". Unless you were a car nut and could recognise VW parts bin stuff such as the cruise control switch etc. there is very little about a new Ibiza or Leon/Altea that gives the game away. This really starts building a unique brand identity and value. Sadly the Exeo undermines this significantly as being clearly an A4 with a nose and tail job (plus new steering wheel). Hence the launch of this car may be an expedient decision, but not one that is in the best long term interests of the brand (assuming the brand has a long term future, which is, perhaps, another question....)

 horseandcart- the ultimate conspiracy theorist.