Everyone in Spain has seen, heard about or had a Seat 600 at home. This car model was an icon of the 60s and has gone down in history as one of the most recognized vehicles in society. Spanish. But, surely very few have dared to take it apart to find out what the insides of this unique car are like.
Mario Fraile did dare to take the step and recovered a Seat 600 and disassembled it and assembled it in his own way, as shown in this video in La Vanguardia’s El Reto de los Lectores. A special car for him, as it was the first one he had in his life and with which he shared good memories of his youth. The car has been baptized by his grandchildren as “el yayo”, in honor of the owner of the vehicle. But what is so peculiar about the Seat 600?
Born in Córdoba, Fraile was a sports journalist during his professional career and has always been a car lover. He started in the world of communication at a very young age, when at just 14 years old he had the opportunity to publish his first interview with Miguel Reina, father of the goalkeeper of the Spanish soccer team, Pepe Reina, in the Patio Cordobés publication. He worked in various local written press and radio media, as a sports announcer on José María García’s Hora 25 program on Cadena SER or as a presenter on Municipal Television of Córdoba.
In his retirement, he decided to recover the vehicle that marked the first steps of his youth: the Seat 600. With the help of his two cousins, he bought a car of this model and assembled and disassembled it completely. In this photographic report and in the video, from the photos provided by Mario Fraile, you can see what the entire assembly and dismantling process of the vehicle was like from the beginning to the final result.
When Mario Fraile came of age, his parents bought him a second-hand Seat 600 after he got his driving license. With it he took his first steps on the road. When he was older, due to circumstances in his life, he moved to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and had to sell his car, which at that time was a Fiat Punto. After a couple of years, he returned to Córdoba and, finding himself limited in movement, he felt the need to buy a new vehicle.
As he had always wanted to drive a Seat 600 again, due to the reminiscences it brought him of his past, he decided to acquire it and repair it on his own. That’s how he began the transformation of the vehicle, from stripping it to linking it piece by piece. “The condition was to find a Seat 600 with the Córdoba license plate. And I found it,” says Fraile.
With the help of their two relatives, professional mechanics, they prepared the disassembly of the Seat 600. “As they had mechanical skills because they work with cars every day, they dedicated themselves to doing the most complicated tasks: disassembling the parts, removing the screws. …”, says Fraile. Meanwhile, he cleaned and polished the pieces with the brush, classified them and put them in different, marked plastic bags so he would then know where each gadget was placed. The parts of the brake system on the one hand, the brake shoes on the other… In short, Fraile helped with the simplest tasks. In this way, the three of them complemented the work. They dismantled the entire car: the doors, the cranks, the odometers, the rear windows… Everything. Even down to the electrical installation. Only the bodywork remained.
The most complex moment was when they reached the engine, since it is the most sensitive element of the car and you have to pay special attention to it, especially leaving the parts well separated so that they can later be placed in the same place where they were. And if you place a part out of position, the engine will not work. Therefore, they were disassembling pinion by pinion, valve by valve, screws and washers, very carefully and grouping them by function and location of the engine system. And finally, they removed the gearbox.
When only the skeleton of the vehicle remained, they took it to the workshop to have it painted the blue color that the car had originally, since it had lost all shade. Then they began the process of assembling all the parts and structures to give shape to the car. “The disassembly had been relatively easy, but the assembly was another story,” explains Fraile. They had a first obstacle when they reviewed each of the vehicle’s components and realized that there were many that were worn, defective or completely unusable.
So they had to buy many new pieces, in addition to spare parts, trim, upholstery, carpet… “When we put in a new piece we already changed the others because, in order for it to break after no time, we said we’d better change everything.” , Fraile sentence. “Without realizing it, you get into a loop adding replacement after replacement and in the end the cost goes up a lot. After all, the investment to renew the Seat 600 exceeded 10,000 euros,” he confesses. To which we must add the nearly 3,000 euros that the purchase of the original vehicle cost him.
The renovation process for the yayo took time, but much less than Fraile expected. Six months dedicated body and soul to transforming his Seat 600, and in which only on weekends they could move forward with their duty. Despite everything, Fraile and his two handy cousins ??were able to complete the assembly of the car successfully. The final detail was to place the license plate on the Seat 600 exactly as it had in 1970, when the vehicle was registered. According to the Historic Vehicle Regulations, all cars built or registered before 1970 can carry the license plate as it was used at that time.
Having experienced the process of assembling and disassembling a Seat 600 on his own, Fraile realized that it is a much simpler car than it seems. “Without mechanical experience you are able to fix it. Everything is manual, it has three pins counted,” he states. Even without having knowledge in automobile repair, Fraile and his two cousins ??did not have any major difficulties and they greatly enjoyed the process, satisfied with the final result. “I remember when my cousin put the key in the car to see if it would start. When we saw that he started walking, we started clapping and shouting with joy,” says Fraile.
“On the street there is not a day that people do not stop me and ask me where the car is from, what year… And they tell me anecdotes that they lived driving a 600.” And the Seat 600 was a shock that left a legacy that has passed from generation to generation. This is one of the stories that pays tribute to a classic that transformed the streets of Spain in the 60s and that was part of the daily lives of thousands of families.
