Classic cars with history: Seat Ritmo Crono

In 1982 a sporty version of the beloved Seat Ritmo made its debut on the Spanish market: the Seat Ritmo Crono. Seat thus filled a gap for Ritmo buyers who wanted more sporting credentials. Until then the Ritmo had been the poor relation of the Fiat Ritmo Italian model (still with the Spanish pushrod engine), but this time Fiat borrowed the engine from the Fiat 132: a twin-camshaft unit of 1592 cc producing almost 100 horsepower.

Although the engine was not tuned for greater durability, the Crono did not exceed a top speed of 180 km/h (170 according to some sources). It featured one of the first five-speed gearboxes offered by Seat, with longer gear ratios than those of the smaller Ritmo models.

The first thing people did when getting into this kind of car at the time was to see “how quickly it accelerated”. The Ritmo Crono did this well, reaching just over 18 seconds for the 400 metres, a time that was already being beaten in those years by larger models with the same engine capacity as the Crono, though more expensive. Aesthetically it was not particularly remarkable: Seat offered only three colours to choose from (red, black and platinum grey), enlivened by a “sporty” side stripe and simply the word Crono.

The Seat Ritmo Crono was the last Ritmo built in Spain and one of the Seat models with the shortest production run (around six months). These were times when the split between Seat and Fiat had consequences for the kind of models Seat had to sell in order to project itself internationally with its own personality. The arrival of the new Seat Ronda (the Ritmo with the headlights changed) finally put an end to the aspirations of this pseudo-sports car.

Source | Seat Fans Club, Wikipedia, Historia Seat