File talk:Volkswagen Brasilia TF.JPG

Charles, you have taken many cool photos of many rare cars, but I think this one takes the cake. It was built in Brazil, but the five-door version was never actually sold in the Brazilian domestic market - it was only ever exported, to places as unlikely as Nigeria (as the Igala), the Philippines, and apparently the Canaries. An amazing shot of a car which may very well be entirely extinct by now. You rock. Mr.choppers (talk) 06:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I noticed several interestingly non European Volkswagens in Tenerife in the late 1970s

Renault also spotted that Spanish people like extra doors

Something (the way that Spanish people like extra doors) Seat had identified with the successful Seat 600 and repeated with the 850.

Um ... thanks for noticing. My first visit to Tenerife, was in 1978 and I ws preoccupied with holiday matters, but I seem to have noticed several cars not familiar in other bits of Europe. One larger moral is that it's almost impossble accurately to predict which pictures one makes today will be most interesting in 30 years.

I hadn't taken in that the five door Brasilia was only available on (?some)export markets. It stood out on the street for me at the time because it looked like a slightly scaled down Volkswagen 411/412 Variant, and the German built (Salzgitter plant, I think) 411/412 Variant was only ever available with three doors. I guess the public relations people muttered into their microphones something about structural rigidity. The other challenging bit about this Brasilia picture was that the car was on a steep slope so there's a trade-off between leaving the car looking as though it's about to roll into the sea and making the people, including the very un-Spanish but nevertheless pleasingly eye-cathing lady in shorts, tilt alarmingly.

I wonder if they sold this five door Brasilia anywhere else. Tenerife is politically part of Spain even if spiritually (and in terms of the Volkswagens you saw there) it sometimes felt like it was closer to Brazil than they show you on the maps. Maybe Tenerife benefited from different levels of import restrictions dating from the Franco period (when the mainland Spanish auto-industry (aka, in the 1960s, Seat) sat protected behind high tarriff barriers and other import restrictions). The message from Seat (and later from Renault) was that the Spanish market insisted on the option of a second set of doors even on little cars which were inflicted on Italian and even on French buyers with only two doors. Fiat 600s and 850s both turn up in Spain as Seats with an extra set of doors. Ditto a booted Renault 5 (ie the Renault 7) which was also a Spain special. Why Spanish passengers couldn't be persuaded to struggle over a partly folded front seat like the rest of us I don't know....

Well,that was more interesting than what I was meant to be doing. Back to Tuesday. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)