I Found A Strange Brazilian Counterpart To That Famous Dustin Hoffman VW Commercial

For most people, their first real exposure to the actor Dustin Hoffman – you know, the guy from the famous Kramer vs. Kramer, Ishtar, Tootsie, and Midnight Cowboy (including its unofficial sequel, Kung-Fu Panda) movies, was in the 1967 movie, The Graduate. However, eagle-eyed appreciators of foreign car commercials in America may also remember him from a role he got just before The Graduate: a Volkswagen commercial.

This VW commercial is interesting because it’s not for the Beetle or Bus or even the Karmann Ghia, but rather for the Type 3, specifically the Type 3 Fastback that was introduced in 1965, four years after the overall Type 3 lineup was introduced, consisting of the Notchback (three-box sedan), Squareback (station wagon), and the Type 3 Ghia.

Advertising for the Type 3s tended to focus on the car’s biggest party trick: their packaging. Thanks to a modified fan setup, the air-cooled flat-four engine was made very flat indeed, and packaged under the rear floor of the cars, allowing for trunks/cargo areas at the front and rear:

This feature tended to be the focus of many of the Type 3’s commercials:

Though, I should note, not all; this one is proudly announcing the available automatic transmission, as well as, fascinatingly, rolling its eyes at customer demands for luxury features that VW seems to consider frivolous, like power windows and 400 horsepower engines:

Compared to modern concepts of advertising, that ad is fascinating!

Anyway, back to the two trunks and Dustin Hoffman. Right before Hoffman got his role in The Graduate, the one that would make him so very famous, he got this role in a Volkswagen commercial, likely around 1966 or 1967:

It’s a fun ad, and Hoffman’s energetic and slightly clunky delivery (“it’s pretty jazzy………too!”) and I especially like how kind of rough he is banging around the interior of the car, flopping his feet over seats and slamming doors and hoods.

In this interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Hoffman suggests that VW ran the commercial for ten years after he shot it, but that’s just not true; the Type 3 line was discontinued in 1973, and, despite Dustin’s assertions there, VW did change the car over the years. Here, watch:

Okay, I think a young Dustin Hoffman being in these ads is sort of well-known now, at least among VW geeks. What I never realized, though, was that there seems to be a Brazilian version of this same basic ad, featuring the Brazilian-market-only VW 1600 Variant, which was very similar – but not exactly – to a Type 3:

Look at that! Even knowing zero Portuguese, I can tell that this is essentially the exact same ad. Look at the guy – he shows the front trunk, then he trots over to the back and shows the large, flat rear cargo area, where he seems to realize he has no idea where the engine lives.

This seems to set him into a mild panic as he starts to look all over the car as the voice over speaks, even looking in the glove box.’

Would he have been satisfied if he found an engine in the glove box?

So, who sells this better? Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman, or some possibly now-dead Brazilian actor?