The record
Metalúrgica de Santa Ana, S.A. was registered at Linares, in the province of Jaén, on 24 February 1955, its factory built with Spanish government money meant to industrialise the province. Agricultural machinery was the original plan, but an agreement with Rover followed within a year and the first Spanish-built Land Rovers — Series IIs — reached the market in 1958. The licence relationship lasted until about 1990. Through the 1960s the Spanish company moved from assembling Solihull kits towards complete local manufacture and towards models of its own, aimed at Spanish farmers and at export markets in South America, North Africa and the Middle East that Solihull could not supply.
The 1300 was the first big product of that independence. AROnline's Santana timeline dates the start of production to 1967, in both petrol and diesel forms. Its basis was the long-wheelbase 109-inch Santana Series IIA, but with the cab and mechanicals moved as far forward as the chassis allowed to leave a long, low load area behind — a cab-over-engine layout conceived for much the same job as Britain's Land Rover 101 Forward Control, though developed quite separately and, crucially, sold to anyone who wanted one rather than reserved for the army. The name simply recorded its payload: 1.3 tonnes.
Mechanically it was pure Series IIA. Both 2,286 cc four-cylinder engines were offered — the petrol giving 81 CV at 4,250 rpm on an 8:1 compression ratio, the diesel 62 CV at 4,000 rpm on 23:1 — driving through the standard four-speed-and-transfer-box arrangement. The wheelbase was 2,778 mm, overall length 4,840 mm, and the vehicle weighed 1,760 kg with the petrol engine or 1,840 kg with the diesel. Some vehicles built to order for government bodies received the six-cylinder engine from the donor Santana range. Bodies varied widely: flat trays, dropside and tilt-covered pickups, hard tops, crew cabs and specialist conversions, with fire brigades among the notable users — preserved examples in Madrid fire brigade and Santander colours survive in museum collections.
Production ran to about 4,000 vehicles before the model was replaced in the market by the larger Santana 2000, with a two-tonne payload and a Santana-developed six-cylinder engine, at the end of the 1970s. That makes the 1300 rare today even in Spain, and rarer still abroad. The Linares plant went on to build Suzukis from the mid-1980s and its own Santana 2500 and PS-10/Aníbal, before the Junta de Andalucía closed the company in 2011.
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