Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s was, in many ways, to automobiles what Australia was to marsupials: a protected, contained environment where the denizens of that region could thrive and grow to fill every environmental niche. That’s how we got air-cooled Volkswagens that seemed to fill every automotive category along with Renaults built by Willys and and Ford trucks made into sedans. This unique and peculiar environment also gave the world the cars of Avallone, which is, as far as I can tell, the only company that built and sold Volkswagen Passat wagon limousines.
That’s the thing about Brazil in this era of the “import substitution industrialization” – which was between 1945 to 1964 and established a pattern of protectionism that made finished imports expensive, and so spurred local industry to fill the gaps – all kinds of strange automotive adaptations grew. There were still classes of people in Brazil who desired limousines, but since the country was unlikely to import enough stretch Cadillacs and Lincolns to fill the demand, local companies stepped in.
One of these companies was Avallone, which was founded in 1971 by an ex-race car driver, Antônio Carlos Avallone, who started off building racing cars. The company soon moved into making replicas, like vintage MGs with Chevette drivetrains, and then in the 1980s began to make convertible variants of the Brazilian-built version of the Volkswagen Beetle, known as the Fusca.
The original German-built Beetle convertibles were all made by Karmann coachworks; when Brazil cracked down on imports, no more Beetle convertibles were available. But Volkswagen of Brazil was building plenty of Fuscas, so Avallone saw an opportunity and made their own version of the convertible.
This was structured much like the Karmann one, but with some fiberglass parts. The quality was quite high for the construction and the top, which was good, since these were about 60% more in price than a normal Fusca, and were largely hand-built, with only about 50 a year being made.
Looming legal pressures from the VW mothership helped Avallone decide to move into something perhaps more secure, the limousine business. The company made limousines not out of the luxury cars that normally form the basis of limos, but out of whatever was readily available, pretty much. That’s how we end up with a Brazilian-market Chevy Monza-based limo:
You can also see the Avallone MG replica in that little video, and there’s some good images of the Monza donor cars, which should remind you that these were basically the Brazilian version of the ’80s Chevy Cavaliers – not really what anyone thinks of as luxury cars.
Avallone also made a the slightly more up-market Chevy Opala Presidential limo:
But the Avallone limos I want to talk about more are the series of limos they made based on VW Passat (the second-generation one known as the Santana in Brazil and many other places in the world, like China). The company made four versions of these Santana (Senior, Executive and Presidential, lengthened by 8 inches, 25, and 33 inches, respectively) and also one based on the wagon version, which was known as the Quantum in Brazil, and seated eight.
I love that the Avallone logo is just the clichéd ’70s and ’80s COM-PU-TOR text, a stylized version of the OCR-A typography used for machine-readable checks, among other things, though this variant was a sci-fi staple for years.
On that ad you’ll also note there is a Personal edition, which seems to not be lengthened, but has the modified roofline with the half-vinyl look. This roofline is interesting because it seems to be based on the look of cars like the Chrysler New Yorker, which got the squared-off roof effect by adding in a fiberglass cap, then hiding all the ugliness under the vinyl top:
I’m not certain that’s what Avallone was doing, but I sure wouldn’t be surprised if it was something similar.
I think the most interesting of these is, by far, the wildly stretched Quantum wagon one:
I mean, look at this beast! I think there are three rows of seats in there, with two people up front, three on a bench in the middle, then three more on a bench at the rear. This one seems to have been built more for passenger-hauling ability over luxury, so maybe this was designed for something like airport-hauling duties or something of that nature.
The Passat/Santana as a platform for luxury cars is unusual, but that’s the magic of this era of Brazilian cars! I’m not sure there’s anywhere else in the world that would have bothered to do this, but at this one point in time and in this one place, not just one Santana limo made sense, but four.
What a magical world.
Brazil, home of the elusive Sciroccoccocco.
The Quantum model name was also used in the US.
The front half of Santana Senior and Quantum Familia comes from Brazilian-exclusive two-door coupé while the rear half from regular Santana saloon and Quantum estate (respectively).
Brazil was the only country to get the 2-door notchback but there was a 3-door hatchback in Germany that used the same doors. It was even, briefly, offered in the US but even VW hatchback coupe-minded buyers went for Rabbit GTIs and Sciroccos instead.
I visited Cyprus as a child in the early 90s, when tourism was just starting to take off after decades of conflict. I was awestruck by about 60 or 70% of taxis being stretched, three-row Mercedes W123 and 124s. Given I was travelling with my parents, my bollocks of an older brother and a set of grandparents, having all that seating was really practical. They weren’t anything special on the inside, but I still felt like a wee VIP every time we got in or out of one. So maybe that was the role for these cars, too?
Your comment about the font used for the Avallone logo sent me into a brief rabbit hole, at the bottom of which I found the proper name for it: Westminster.
http://www.mercerdesign.com/true-story-westminster-font/
As a child of the 70s/80s, I thought that this would be used for all fonts/typeface someday. After all, it was the front of the future. We did not get the future we were promised. This is bullshit.
Ahh Brazil, you could get a limo based on the Chevy Cavalier or a luxury car which looked like a Chrysler K car had sex with a VW Passat. No wonder the beetle was still selling so well.
I thought there was a time in Brazil that you wouldn’t want to seen in a limo. Most everyone drove two-doors because four-doors meant limo, and limo meant rich, and rich meant you were targeted for kidnapping. I might have the years or South American country wrong.
I don’t think that was as much in the ’80s
Actually, 4 door cars were linked to cars used as taxi, and that was a problem when smaller cities would not standarize them: any car and any color could be used as cab, if the owner has the licenses.
Because of this, 4 doors car would lose way more value in the used car market. 2 doors cars were the easiest way to get away from a taxi that had its odometer rolled back.
The myriad influences you note are all preferable to Rob Thomas.
Notice that the wagon and Senior have lengthened front doors, an underrated way of balancing the proportions of a stretch limo. Also a cheap one since they used the longer doors from a stock 2 door Passat.
A unique selling point- a limo that only improves access to the front seats.
Since that’s how you get in to the middle row, makes sense. Did they start with a two door?
Good eye.
That is good design engineering for a small project.
When the samba takes you, out of nowhere
With the background fading, out of focus
Yes the picture’s changing, every moment
And your destination, you don’t know it…
Also, I’m glad you’re getting some real mileage out of that ridiculous ’80s Chrysler vinyl-top mess. It deserves to be ridiculed at every possible opportunity.
And any minute now, we’re expecting the latest tariffs announcement. What will the Avallone of 2020s USA be? Or to ask it another way, what’s the weirdest thing you can do with an F150?
“what’s the weirdest thing you can do with an F150?”
Maybe turn it into a sedan?
https://carbuzz.com/news/the-ford-f-150-sedan-looks-so-weird/
I’m here for it. Couldn’t be weirder than Brazil’s own (Super Duty-based) Tropiclassic (which The Bishop mentions):
https://www.theautopian.com/lets-imagine-what-it-would-be-like-if-ford-turned-the-f-150-into-a-new-crown-victoria/
Regular F150s basically are sedans, with large lid-less trunks
Protectionist era Brazil has been on my mind a lot with the new tariff regime, but we still have FMVSS and EPA to deal with, so the creativity will not be there, many potential niches will just go unfilled
So you are saying we should get rid of the FMVSS and EPA next, got it.
That might solve the kei car crisis, if there is no FMVSS then nothing meets it.
Well, if we’re going to essentially cut off all imports by making them prohibitively expensive, then, yes, we should loosen up on FMVSS as a practical necessity to ensure at least some comparatively affordable cars can still be sold here
Or, we can just not do the tariffs, that’s also an option. But it might require Congress doing work, and we all know that’s not happening
We won’t have EPA for long
That was my first thought as well – what sort of weird machines will we build now that we are isolated and massively dumbed down.
Military ones.
Hopefully whatever Toecutter comes up with can be put into mass production, that would be a beneficial change.