[Live and let Diecast] - A review of Feijoada Friday

"edu-petrolhead" (edu-petrolhead) 01/01/2016 at 13:53 • Filed to: diecast, lald, models, brazilian, feijoada friday

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First, a glad new orbit around the Sun for everyone! As usual at the end of each year, it’s my turn to do a review of something. This is an “index” of all my Feijoada Friday posts. For who doesn’t know what it’s about, I’m telling the history of Brazilian cars one model at a time, using photos of 1/43 models of each one.

The Brazilian market was completely closed for imports during a long time, so a kind of a “Galapagos” evolution happened here to cars. The ban made the kit cars flourish, and motivated the creation of many exclusive cars, not to be found anywhere else. Even when a “global” car was made here, history always followed the most tortuous paths!

Everything began with the Opala SS. I called the post !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! because it indeed was the first car entirely developed by Brazilian GM specially to the Brazilian market.

Just after the Opala, one of its biggest contenders: The US-hated, Brazilian-loved Ford Maverick. This post was called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! due to this very same reason.

The next post was about a very known truck all over the world, the Ford F-100. This car was an immense success here, since it was pretty and sturdy, so the post’s name was just !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . I briefly wrote about something I believe that exists only here: “sedanized” trucks, with fiberglass coachbuilt bodies turning those big trucks into huge sedans.

Der Kleine Wunder was made here, and in the 60’s if you went to Rio de Janeiro you’d certainly rode into a Belcar taxi! The post title, “Deixavê” or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! comes from its popular nickname, since the suicide doors provided a nice view of the female passengers when they stepped out of the cars...

It seems they mixed the names somehow, but the Renault Dauphine was called the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! here. And just after it was renamed the Willys Gordini, even though it wasn’t the true Gordini sporty version!

Stepping into the air-cooled realm, a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is a very appropriate name for the Karmann-Ghia. Did you know that the Karmann-Ghia had a sucessor here, called the Karmann-Ghia TC that looked like a Porsche?

Yet within the air cooleds, our car named after a big cat: The Puma, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . This is the first of a (future) long series of Pumas.

Following to a French car, the Simca Chambord was our first luxury car. It completely changed our market, since Brazilian drivers weren’t used to think about driving something luxurious! Its impact was so big that even songs were composed about it, like Camisa de Venus’ Simca Chambord, that sung !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Obviously at some moment I would talk about the Beetle, or the Fusca as we call it. Even here we have the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , reflected on the post’s title, but only with blue Fuscas. Being such an important car, everyone always have a good story with a Beetle to tell anywhere in the world, and here it isn’t different.

Following to the Fiat 147, it was the first car you could buy !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! In the post I tell both the story behind the 147 and the story of the Brazilian ethanol fuel program, the Proálcool.

And to fight the immense Fiat 147 success, Volkswagen projected a car that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that it’s still made today, at it’s 6th generation. The VW Gol spawned an entire family of cars, and the VW Fox sedan and wagon you probably know at the US are its offsprings.

Fiat wasn’t happy losing the crown to VW, so they got big guns, and fired their global car at the Gol. The Fiat Uno, or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as it got nicknamed was also a big hit. It was made without major changes until 2013, when the mandatory airbags and ABS couldn’t be fitted into it.

Finally, gunshots, mariachis, and a car named after the newly built capital. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! has so much stuff!

So, the series is just starting! I have over 100 Brazilian cars to showcase, so there’s a lot more to write about!