The best way to tell if a (1975 and up) Bus is Brazilian is to look at the rear. If it has the long taillights of a 1972 and later US-spec bus and a Bay Window (as in, not split) front end along with traits from the pre-Bay Window buses (below the beltline engine air intakes on the sides, smaller windows with the corner windows, and hinged instead of sliding side doors) then it’s a Brazilian Type 2. See, where in America and much of the world the bus changed significantly from 1967 (last Split Window year) to 1968 (first Bay Window year), in Brazil the Split Window design was built from 1959 to 1974, and 1975 had a sort of half-Bay Window change, with the front end matching the rest of the world but the rest only partially changed, with the differences shown in the pic up there, with the expected Bay Window style inset. The result is a bus that has a lot of appealing early bus design traits (those rear corner windows!) with the more updated front end. I really like these Brazilian ones, and it allows a classic look with a much newer bus – case in point, that 1989 model above. Mexican-built buses switched to a liquid-cooled engine in 1991, so those sprouted a radiator, and are easy to identify: I say it seems the Brazilian buses aren’t commanding the same absurd prices as their German counterparts because I saw this bus go on the block:
…which looks like a normal mid-’60s 21-window bus, complete with plenty of desirable options like the opening front “safari” windshields, roof racks, and that great extra cyclopean light on the roof. This sort of thing has been selling for over $100,000 for a while now, but this one went for about half that, and as far as I can tell, it’s because it’s a Brazilian-built (pre-1975, though) one.
Based on this example and some idle chatter, it seems Brazilian buses aren’t going for as much, which I think makes them a hell of A Deal. Who cares if it’s Brazilian? These are fantastic, and it’s not like you’re really risking sacrificing reliability or anything.
So, there’s my tip, based on some limited observations and some talk. Use it at your own risk.
I can’t think of another vehicle where the gap between the imagined and actual ownership experience is larger.
Unless all you plan on doing is put-putting to the farmers market on side streets, these are frustration-mobiles.
You can’t listen to music in one because any stereo loud enough to hear over the noise requires too much power for the alternator to keep up.
Gas mileage ain’t all that great either – maybe 20 mpg because you run the engine flat out, all the time. The only reason they were popular back in the day was that we were all tripping our brains out rather young and naive and knew no better.
TL/DR – never actually drive your heros.
Our puchase of a new(!) ’89 Plymouth Voyager was a life-changing revelation!
After I’d decided I just didnt have time for that anymore, I listed it on The Samba, got a call an hour later, and a guy flew out from California (I’m in Colorado) to buy it. What he paid for it bought me a brand new A-frame pop-up trailer to camp in plus about 80% of a kitchen remodel.
I loved that bus and it’s a fun ‘club’ to belong to, but what the things go for now vs. what they actually offer, just leaves me shaking my head.
If I’m buying a Ferrari, I want it built by a bunch of Italians. But, since Ray Ban moved production from the USA to Italy, they lost a piece of their appeal to me. When an item is so bathed in the culture it originally stemmed from, it picks up some indescribable trait when it’s actually built there, that can’t be recreated when it’s built elsewhere. See, it’s not a dig against where it’s made, it’s more of what’s lost compared to the “original”. It’s some unidentifiable trait that can’t really be measured, seen, or touched.
You know what I call such traits? “Imaginary.” My 1970 Mercury Cougar is one of fewer than 2,000 XR-7 convertibles made that year. The VIN indicates that it originally came with an H-code 2-barrel 351 cubic inch engine… but that H code does not differentiate between a 2-barrel 351 Cleveland and a 2-barrel 351 Windsor, even though they are very different engines with no interchangeable parts. I happen to know that the engine in my car is not original. I pulled the original Cleveland mostly because of parts availability and lack of wide aftermarket support, and replaced it with a Windsor that also came from a ’70 Cougar. Unless someone found some obscure paperwork from Dearborn that indicated otherwise, nobody would ever be able to tell that it’s not the original engine; all date codes and VIN information would support its imagined originality. But I know the truth, having performed the swap myself, and if I told a potential buyer, it might materially affect the sale cost, if they were more in love with the concept of an undisturbed original engine than they were the idea of being able to easily convert the car to EFI or adding a supercharger or whatever. The car has been made potentially better (both H-code engines were factory rated for 250hp, so the swap is more or less a wash in terms of performance) if one wanted to add power-adders in the future, but it has lost originality, even though nobody can really tell. So that lost quality is pretty much imaginary if even someone who worked on the Dearborn factory line in Fall 1969 can’t tell that my car has the “wrong” engine in it.
We all love cars for a million subjective reasons, few of which make any logical sense, but those truly nebulous qualities like factory origin (if it doesn’t materially affect build quality or parts longevity) don’t matter at all to me.
There’s one that lives in North Seattle. I figured it for a bastardization by someone with decent bodywork skills & a mishmash of carcasses to work with.
How many million is a Brazilian anyway?
First, although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Brazilian buses in their own right (and yes, some of the weird mashup configurations are pretty neat!), a number of shady importers/dealers have started trying to foist them upon unsuspecting buyers as “just same as a German bus.” Anyone familiar with Wolfsburg or Hannover buses who’s inspected even a really nice Brazilian example up close will attest that this is objectively not the case. The stampings, welding, and overall assembly quality are markedly lower quality than a German original.
Next, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Brazilian buses tended to live very hard lives. They’ve spent the last four or five decades being flogged up and down rutted out jungle paths and cobblestone streets loaded down with God knows what, and bodged together by any means necessary to keep them in service. Now that demand has risen to sufficient levels, they’re being “restored” with more shoddy welding, pop rivets, and a generous slathering of poorly-prepped body filler and shipped off to the States.
Finally, as I mentioned initially, these buses are coming ashore in the hands of a number of opportunist “importers” who would have you believe that a shiny Brazilian bus with a hacked-in 23-window Samba conversion is worth original German money (or at least close to it). Pay no attention to the wavy body panels, missing belly pans, odd shut lines, cobbled-in door hinges, etc. In fact, the two-tone “Samba” pictured above is an excellent illustration of this — No respectable restoration shop would turn out a 23-window looking that lumpy.
All of this is to say that Brazilian buses are totally fine for what they are, and what they are is decidedly less desirable than a German bus. If you’re comfortable with the potential pitfalls and can find one for a price commensurate with the facts, then a Brazilian might be for you. Caveat emptor.
My uncle had a Combi for his business and I loved the bugger, quality be damned.
Oddly enough, BMW seems to have had the same paint supplier as a lot of early 2002s came in the same green and orange.
A drunk hit&ran it a couple years later revealing exactly how much rust it really had: it became origami.
Cars are way safer today in every measurable way.
As fun as it would be to have one of these, I’d much rather import a Brasilia, SP2, or one of those bonkers Ford F-1000 2-door van-pickup outfits if I were actually to go to the trouble of doing such.
