I’m not going to lie to you – we’re long past that. I stayed up to late making my slides for my talk tonight, so now I’m up and tired and slow on Cold Start. It happens! Thankfully, there’s Volkswagen brochures/ads from Brazil to soothe us, so all is not lost. Let’s just look at a few brochures that caught my weary eyes, and do keep in mind that this is just scratching the surface. Remember, Brazil is to air-cooled VWs what Australia is to marsuipials: a place of strange evolutions, away from the rest of the world.
What I like about that top ad is how it’s touting how the 1980s VW Brasilia – essentially a cleverly re-bodied Beetle – has a dashboard from 2001. It’s some pretty hilarious hyperbole, but I suppose if you compare it to the previous version of the dashboard:
…it sorta makes sense? I mean, it’s more ’80s-modern, with clean, white-on-black gauges and all that, but there’s nothing overtly digital or high-tech-looking, really. Also fascinating to note is that the Brasilia is one of those rare times in the air-cooled era when VW made a fake gauge! You can see the earlier one on the right there, the little round dial with no needle and no reference points that does a great job of measuring either nothing, or the car’s status as not having the optional clock installed (it’s reading 100% for that.)
The new fake gauge makes it small and vertical, mirroring the fuel gauge:
It looks kind of like a vollyball net, seen from above.
I really do admire the Brasilia: putting a modern-looking two-door wagon body with good storage space at both ends on a car platform designed in 1938 is a hell of an achievement. Of all the attempts to update/replace the Beetle in the air-cooled era, I think the Brasilia was the only real success.
I also love this shot from a review of the Brasilia; you’d think the headline would be talking about how they got this thing on almost one wheel there, but, no, it’s about it having four doors and drinking a bit more gas.
One of my absolute favorite air-cooled VWs is the Brazil-only Karmann-Ghia TC, which I’ve raved about here before. What I don’t get about this brochure is the upside-down title text. I get that you can do things like this for stylistic reasons, but everything here is so strightforward, this just feels like a mistake. If you were to put this in like a rack of brochures, would you put it in upside-down, so you can see the name? Or hide the name? I’m confused.
The fake gauge is actually an optional vacuum gauge, which begs another question: Why did they use a car without options for the brochure? One would think they’d have a top spec one in hand.
Gosh, that TC is a gorgeous design.
Are we going to just ignore the fire extinguisher in that older brochure?
Back in the 80s and 90s, they were standard equipment in Brazilian cars. Not sure if they still are today.
No longer! But the requirement was lifted only sometime during the 2010s, as I remember my 2010 Ford Fusion still had one (somewhat tacked-on, since it was obviously not in the original design).
Some additional trivia: the “flying” Brasilia was being tested by Quatro Rodas, the historically most relevant car magazine in Brazil, which somehow hasn’t yet gone bust, considering the competition from car websites and, specially, YouTube channels.
Another curious (and somewhat silly) fact is that, up to the late eighties, there was a huge prejudice against 4/5-door cars in Brazil, since people thought they’d be mistaken for taxis. That’s why the magazine mentions that the four-door Brasilia was to be sold only in basic trim – clearly with cab service in mind. Fiat, of all brands, was the first that somehow was able to convince buyers that 4-door cars were actually very convenient, and now I don’t think that, apart from some small pick-up trucks, there’s any two-door car being manufactured in Brazil.
I heard the fear of 4-doors is what was behind those amazing Ford F-1000 van/truck looking things. Those rank right about number three, behind the SP2 and Brasilia on my list of favorite Brazilian vehicles.
I didn’t realize that the two-doors are gone. I rented a 2-door Corsa when I was there in 2007. It worked quite well, much better than the Fiat Mobi I ended up with a few years ago.
My parents had a 97 Palio that came with a fire extinguisher as standard, too. It was regulation, as Tybalt and Marcos said.
The later square taillight (’74-’76) BMW 2002s used the crosshair instrument faces also. Seems too busy to me.
Brasilia content – muito bom! I’ve almost been able to purchase two of these. The first was located an hour outside of Orlando, and the seller and I were about $2,000 apart. If I had the extra cash at the time I would have bought it, but it didn’t happen. The other was a much cheaper and much sketchier one on ebay that I believe made it’s way up through Mexico into Arizona. It seemed the seller kept running no reserve auctions, but canceling them at the last minute when they didn’t reach their desired amount. It did finally appear to sell, but I had quit bidding by that point. Maybe the third time will be the charm.
Hoping to see a few in their home territory if my family and I can make it to Carnaval next February. Right now we’re dealing with expired passports, so it’s not a for sure thing yet. I’ll be rooting for the Duque de Caxias Samba school (aka the Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Acadêmicos do Grande Rio) at the Sambadromo in Rio if we do.
I’m a Portela man myself, but I’m hoping to import a Brasilia as soon as storage space allows.
That’s awesome! I would be quite interested to learn more about that import process. I’ve briefly looked into it, but a lack of time and somewhat limited funds have kept that to a mostly cursory glance. I do have family in Florida (including a Brazilian mother-in-law), so I figure that could help with the titling process should I ever manage to make it happen.
That might help, what will help me is having a gearhead uncle in Brasil who can inspect cars for me such that I don’t have to travel every time I want to check a car (or worse, buy sight-unseen). I’m sure importation will cost a few grand, but with a clean car going for like 10k USD you can probably have it here, including purchase price, for 13-15k
I used to “hunt” those weird Brazilian cars on my neighbourhood and draw then in a sketchbook (there were relatively few models, so it was easy). I lost my feces when I saw a TC, a hitherto unknown to me VW. It was like finding an extra room on your house (but less scary). I also came across a 4-door Brasília (today we would call it a 5 door), and was also shocked, felt like seeing santa Claus without a beard.
So many things about the Brasilia are great, but the blocky “VW” on the steering wheel throws me. It feels like it could be the logo for a performance sub-brand.
I’m glad you mentioned that.I realize this was indeed years ago, but it’s very odd for a corporation to go off-book with something like their brand and logo identification.
While we’re on that topic… I can’t be the only one that noticed the also non-standard steering wheel emblem in that shot with the horn-ring style wheel. That’s usually the Wolfsburg crest, in US-models anyway.
Edit: I did a little snooping elsewhere and this is what we’re seeing, but I can’t find any story behind it:
https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/06/62/01/60/1000_F_662016012_WTPHPZwhoWixguHVUJ64MTXQYd5E10tP.jpg
Is your presentation going to be live streamed? Where can we watch the webcast?
“Of all the attempts to update/replace the Beetle in the air-cooled era, I think the Brasilia was the only real success.” Gonna agree 100% with Torch here, good looking adaptive reuse & a 10-year production run with sales of a million+
Consider that, in Brazil, that was a lack of options at that time. There were 4 makers (GM, VW, Fiat and Ford), each with 2 or 3 models. Imports were close to impossible and prohibitively expensive, even for rich people.
It wasn’t that hard to sell many of any car at that time.
And VW didn’t had money to spend doing something else, so they had to be creative. Until the introduction of Passat, everything else they built for almost 30 years was derived from Bettle plataform.
Also, independent builders use it to create many more things.
Good luck with the presentation this evening!
There appear to be creases between the title text and the main body of the brochure. You could fold the title piece away from you / toward the back of the brochure as it is shown in the pic, and then fold the whole thing like you’re closing a book.
Once you do that, the title text will be upright and visible and the brochure will be thicker along the lower edge.
I think you’re correct. Be interesting to see what’s on the reverse side of this brochure and how it aligns with the folded text.
I’m guessing it was simply designed to work like a basic pocket folder like we all had back in grade school, enabling the dealer to tuck info sheets into the pockets.
Agree
I think that’s the answer, but then you have a brochure that opens the opposite way from a regular book, which is weird.
I think what we are seeing is the front and back cover here. The picture of the car is on the front, the upside down text folds inside then flips down when you open it to give more info space inside. I also would like to see the reverse of what is shown here to confirm that though.
If you visualize the front cover as just image page on the right and the spec listing on the left as the back cover, then fold up the bottom to create pockets and read correctly on the inside of the brochure, it works. Used to have to layout a magazine and newspaper and the front and back covers were always laid out this way.
Yeah, I finally put it together in my mind. I was picturing the bottom folded to display the name on the outside, but this makes more sense.
Brazil straddles the northern and southern hemispheres. Hence, the brochure is properly read while standing on the equator with the picture and text on the northern side and the title on the southern side (or vice versa).
Interesting to note how the brochure shows the odometer with something like 20,164 km (over 12k miles) instead of the usual zero or single-digit numbers. Cool detail about the shift pattern being right in the instrument cluster, on the clock face, rather than on the shift stick knob (the norm) or the ashtray (typical air-cooled VW.)
Wow, that’s a lot of brochures.
How many million is in a Brazillian again?
Pretty sure Brazillian involves subtraction/removal; so 0 million.
It’s 10^3 more than Vermilion.
I would be willing to bet three, whole, American dollars that StefthePef has, or at least could, duplicate that near one wheel balance with her 411. Whadayathink, Torch? Think you could pull it off in the Changli?
I think poo might shoot out