LEGENDARY crooner Julio Iglesias' 45-year-old car is up for bidding on the web-based auction site Catawiki, with an expected sale price of around €32,500.
The Seat 1430 Especial 1600, registered in 1972, went under the virtual hammer today (Friday) at noon and bids will be taken for the next 10 days.
At the time the then young, up-and-coming 29-year-old star bought the dark blue Madrid-registered vehicle, brand-new and straight off the forecourt, he paid what was then the eye-wateringly-high sum of 147,700 pesetas (about €886).
But Julio could afford to buy himself a car that was the envy of all other lads his age, and it was one of his first outwards signs of fame and fortune – he had just started to become a household name after winning the Benidorm International Song Festival, which effectively launched his career.
The singer kept the car for four years, then sold it to his manager, who in turn kept it for another 39 years before he resold it in 2015.
Now, the 2015 buyer has put it up for auction and reveals that the car only has 74,000 kilometres (46,250 miles) on the clock and is in a perfect condition, fully functioning and with a current ITV – Spain's answer to an MOT – plus all legal documents in order.
It has no rust whatsoever, as can be clearly seen from the Catawiki photos, one of which is shown above.
Recently, it has been resprayed and the seats reupholstered, but otherwise little has been added to it since it was on the road 45 years ago.
The vehicle is stationed in Santa Pol (Barcelona province) at present, and the price does not include transporting it to the purchaser's destination – something Julio himself paid 1,951 pesetas (€11.71) for on February 3, 1972, to get it from Barcelona to Madrid.
In addition to this and the cool €886 price tag, Iglesias shelled out 5,000 pesetas (€30) for extras such as heated windscreens, a secure locking system, extra decorative elements, and a seatbelt, since these were not in common use at the time in Spain and have only become a legal requirement in the last decade.
Iglesias was so fond of his Seat 1430 that he waxed lyrical about it in an interview for international broadsheet ABC on March 11 the year he bought it, in the section titled El Coche de... ('The car of...')
The singer told reporters the vehicle was 'very fast', 'very comfortable' and 'did not use up much fuel'.
On long journeys, said Julio, “my wife and I take turns at the wheel.”
Julio's wife was Spanish-born Philippine Isabel Preysler, who would go on to be a TV presenter, model and it-girl, as well as the mother of successful 21st-century pop icon Enrique Iglesias.
This year, Preysler is set to wed Peru's Nobel Prize-winning novelist and former left-wing political activist Mario Vargas Llosa, who recently ended decades of marriage to his cousin, Patricia Llosa.
