The Seat factory in Martorell stops producing the Audi A1

The Seat Martorell plant today closes a fifteen-year relationship with Audi with the end of the production of the Audi A1. In fact, relations between the two brands of the Volkswagen group in Baix Llobregat are older, as they started in 2009, with the start of production of the Seat Exeo, an aspirational saloon with a three-box body and estate or station wagon that was actually an Audi A4 from the previous generation, called with the internal nomenclature B7. The very good work of those in Martorell with the Exeo led the Volkswagen Group's management to trust Martorell to manufacture the Audi Q3 SUV there between 2011 and 2018, before a new strategic repositioning saw the VAG Group's top brass assign the manufacture of the Audi A1 there, a model that has been current between 2018 and this 2026.

The Audi A1 was never a highly desired or celebrated car by the brand's unions, as its commercial margin was lower than that of the Q3, and it also did not contribute an added value of quality, reputation, and jobs to the Martorell plant. The A1 is disappearing from Audi's range and will not have any direct successor, even though throughout 2025, 72,200 units of this model were manufactured at the Martorell plant and its main rival, the Mini in electric and combustion format, seems to be experiencing a second youth, with very high sales figures worldwide.The space freed up by the Audi A1 production line will be immediately assigned to two new all-electric models such as the Cupra Raval and the Volkswagen ID Polo, which will also be manufactured at the Catalan factory. Audi neither confirms nor denies a possible successor to the Audi A1 in an electric format that would leverage the base, the modular platform, and the technologies of the two electric models from Cupra and Volkswagen, as Gernot Döllner, CEO of Audi, stated a few weeks ago that "any option to manufacture Audi models in the group's factories is open".A growing relationship

Cupra's new positioning as an aspirational brand and its good commercial and industrial results have led the Volkswagen Group's management to increasingly view favorably the possibility of fostering relationships and technological, mechanical, and knowledge transfers between Audi and Cupra. In fact, the Formentor VZ5 is the first model to use an inline five-cylinder combustion engine, a reality that seemed a pipe dream not so many years ago.In this context, the collaboration between Cupra and Audi for the manufacture of the Terramar, the aspirational all-roader with plug-in hybrid (PHEV) mechanics from Cupra, which since 2024 has been manufactured at Audi's Hungarian plant in the city of Győr and shares a production line with the Audi Q3, a familiar sight from Seat's Martorell plant.