Spanish automotive maker Seat has restored a legendary Seat 600 Convertible to original condition to celebrate its 60th anniversary this year. The car is now “almost better than when it originally left the factory” according to Ángel Lahoz, an engineer at the Seat Technical Centre who was responsible for the Project.

In this project, a team of around 30 people were assigned to fully modernise this gem, which was built in 1965 and had been sitting for the past 25 years. The restoration was carried out completely by hand over 1,500 hours using more than 1,000 original spare parts. Meanwhile, 15 litres of paint was used to recover the classic light blue exterior, and 50 metres of houndstooth fabric was used to echo a time past, while the manually operated sliding roof was also completely hand restored, as well as the original steering wheel.

The Seat 600 is a city car made in Spain from May 1957 to August 1973 under license by Fiat. During the production era, the company had to multiply its production sixfold due to its popularity, with nearly 800,000 units built in total.

The restored Seat 600 Convertible is currently on display at the Automobile Barcelona until May 21.