The record
The Santana 1300 was Santana Motor's own forward-control 1.3-tonne truck, built at Linares in the province of Jaen from 1967 to 1978 on the 109-inch Series IIA chassis with the cab and mechanicals pushed forward to free a long rear deck. Spaniards called it the 'Chato de Linares' — the flat-nosed one from Linares. It measured 4.84 m long on a 2,778 mm wheelbase and stood 2,190 mm tall at the cab, and it used the 2,286 cc four in 81 CV petrol or 62 CV diesel form. About 4,000 were built before the Santana 2000 replaced it.
The 1300 was widely sold as a bare chassis-cab, and the Spanish bodybuilding trade produced a range of superstructures for it; ministries, the Guardia Civil and fire brigades were among the main customers. FIMESA of Madrid was the dominant supplier of fire bodies, and its light forest tender on the 1300 — internally the A-109 — carried a 450-litre tank, four side lockers, a Guinard centrifugal pump with 30 m of high-pressure hose, a roof ladder rack, auxiliary seats, siren, work lamps and a rear towing hook. Brigades from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela, Lloret de Mar and Girona operated them. Santana also built crew-cab 1300s: a 1969 prototype minibus for the Guardia Civil was created by splicing parts of two 109 cabs onto a 1300 chassis, to carry eight to ten officers to incidents at speed.
The crew-cab fire appliance is the same idea applied to fire work, where a full watch must ride to the incident with the pump. A preserved example is held by the Roda Roda, Museu de l'Automocio de Lleida, the municipal motoring museum opened in 2002 in a former mechanical workshop on Calle Santa Cecilia. The registry owner supplied a photograph of it captioned 'Camion de bomberos Land Rover Santana 1300 (1967). Museo de la automocion de Lleida.' Lleida city council independently confirms that the museum conserves two historic appliances from the city's own fire service — a Land Rover Santana fire truck that still carries its period firefighting materials, and the better-known 1973 Magirus Deutz turntable ladder that is kept running for civic events. The council dates the Santana to 1969 rather than the 1967 of the owner's caption; 1967 is also the year the 1300 was launched, which may account for the difference.
Two points rest on the owner's photograph rather than on independently reachable text. The double-cab configuration of the Lleida vehicle is visible in that photograph but is not stated in any published description traced during this research, and the museum publishes no per-vehicle catalogue entry. The firm that built the fire body on this particular chassis is likewise unrecorded: FIMESA is named here as the principal Spanish builder of Santana 1300 fire bodies, not as a documented attribution for the Lleida truck.
