Any aircooled VW. These cars are so damn simple that most roadside repairs can be made with a piece of wire, pliers and maybe zipties. These cars can witstand decades of abuse while refusing to die. They’re light, so it’s harder to get one stuck on the mud in an apocalypse setting.
An undented beige Camry. Does this exist at all?
The Brazilian-market Chevrolet Meriva SS. A large and tall minivan without any performance upgrades. Why waste the SS brand on this when this should be a RS?
A Mercedez-Benz Unimog overland motorhome. With Deutschland plates. In Florianópolis, sourthern Brazil.
The Renault Twingo “beds”. According to Renault itself, the Twingo was designed for students and young people, so rebating the front seats to create a bed was... Interesting ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
IBAP - Industria Brasileira de Automóveis President (Brazilian Industry of Automobiles Presidente). It was founded in ‘63, and aimed to be the first 100% Brazilian automaker. The 120 original workers were also owners of the company, participated on the board of directors, could become resellers and had generous price…
Brazilian here. Don’t even try to understand, tax legislation is a hodge-podge of a gazillion different laws. Most cities have their own laws, which often cover specific products with different tax regimes, which have to comply with state- and country-wide legislation. Just take a look at this guy, who decided to…
Gurgel Itaipu. A 1974 Brazilian electric city car, could had revolutionized urban transportation in a time electric energy was incredibly cheap, and costing the same as a VW Beetle at the time ($22.7k Cruzeiros, or roughly R$84k BRL in today’s money).
Feet on the dash. Enough said.
Peugeot and their line of pepper and coffee grinders. Actually, Peugeot makes them for a much longer time than cars!
Fiat Multipla, easily. The car isn’t just hideous from the exterior (although I find it charming), but the dash is simply grotesque. It looks like a mass of vents, bulbs knobs, controls and everything else that just sprouted together.
In the Brazilian version of the Fiat Uno Mille, introduced in 1984, Fiat replaced the Italian-market torsion bar rear suspension for a tougher one, to survive our roads, and due to the extra space it required in the trunk, they had to relocate the spare to the engine bay:
If we consider modern but not contemporary I would say starter motors. Manual cranking was such a hassle.
From all versions of the Mk.I Parati, you chose the best of them: The facelifted Parati Surf. It came standard with the bumper-mounted fog-lights, painted on the exclusive shade of light blue and with the sought-after bananinha wheels.
My mother-in-law once ran over our turtle in a 3500lb SUV. Poor but strong Judith ended with just a crack on the shell, nothing more.
This is a real Fiat dealership in southern Brazil. I’ve personally met some people with the Fuck (pronounced foo-k) family name.
Not in English, but since pinto is the Portuguese slang for penis, this give a whole new sense for the explosive Ford.
Maybe a Voyage instead? Since the Gol was a hatchback and the Voyage (VW Fox on US) was a two door sedan?
Can we, for a minute, get all the debate on whether EVs are environmentally friendly or not and just agree that Henney Kilowatt is simply the best EV name ever coined?
Ah, first world problems... Down here, in Brazil, it really doesn’t matter if you car is locked or not. Things will be stolen anyway. If there’s nothing to steal, they’ll take the rims or the entire car, towed if necessary.
