Cars

 It looks like a Mini, one of the most famous little cars in the world. Look closely, it’s a Chinese Lifan. 

Rusty doesn’t care about cars and in the ordinary course of things neither do I but this is Brazil and the automotive world is unlike anything in the US. 

Brazil has the tenth largest economy in the world, in a country the size of the Lower 48 with a population around 170 million people. 

There is plenty of poverty to go around and we live in a bubble of middle class wealth in our apartment complex.

We have a swimming pool, a marina with covered storage  for power boats with lake access. There is a pizza parlor, a barber, two well stocked mini markets with fresh produce, a pharmacy and all of it contained inside fencing with face recognition access. For a thousand bucks a month, which for anyone not in the middle class bubble is unimaginably expensive.

GANNET2 has a brand new windshield for $400 already installed. We got a crack in it driving the roads of Amazonia but I knew it would be easy to replace with a Fiat Ducato windshield. I even had the part number from the same problem we fixed in Ecuador last year. 

You can tell this is a middle class complex, as there are expensive German cars by BMW and Audi…

…as well as  Range Rovers and so forth in the parking lot alongside the run of the mill compact cars from Korea Japan and China. 

But electric cars are all over the place in their assigned spots with outlets laid on for them. I’ve not seen a single Tesla and apparently they are not very popular in Brazil.

Build Your Dreams electric car company 

But BYD is and the Chinese company is all over the place. I first noticed them in Ecuador last year, unremarkable looking vehicles except for the advertising.

 We’ve ridden in a few Ubers by Build Your Dreams the largest electric car company in the world apparently  and they are quite comfortable. 

In Brazil energy independence has long been a goal not just a slogan. Gasoline has a minimum 30 % ethanol and we had to adapt the Promaster to burn high ethanol content in the fuel. Brazil has mandated the ethanol because they have abundant home grown sugar cane to supplement their modest oil production in the Atlantic. 

There is a weird Ford F250 parked here as well. It’s called a Tropical and was built in Brazil to get around a ban imposed on diesel powered sedans.

Apparently they took a bunch of sedan parts and stuck them on the back of the F250 pick up.  The company went out of business in 2015. 

But here is a survivor not moved from this spot as long as we’ve been here: 

Brazil has home grown industries including motorcycle assembly plants building Hondas and Yamahas for the local market but in the summer months you’ll see Brazilian adventurers all over Patagonia riding big cylinder adventure bikes looking every bit like European motorcyclists. 

It’s easy to write Latin America nations off as backward and third world, or as “shithole countries” in the words of the US president, but the reality as usual is more nuanced and interesting to a traveler like me. 

Royal Enfield Guerilla 450 made in India 

One thing I have noticed is that locals make terrible travelers. Fear is pervasive among Latin Americans and they are the first to warn travelers of perceived dangers down the road. 

We have driven through parts of Brazil unknown to Brazilians, places viewed as remote and undeveloped in the far north near Venezuela. Amazonia is as exotic here as it is anywhere, a mysterious impenetrable jungle. Except we drove through it in a delivery van.  

Across Central America residents of each country would solemnly warn us about the dangers facing us across the next border. Clearly our own travels have I hope shown that people are people everywhere. 

Don’t be afraid to stand out in a luxury sedan, they have them too.

There are lots of less glamorous and older vehicles too  including air cooled Volkswagens now prized as classics even though many vans are driven daily and even used as taxis in small towns. 

Indeed among the several VW buses in the parking lot is a rare “Final Edition” of the van built in Brazil until 2013.  

One and a half million built over 56 years and this one has to be 12 years old. 

“The Type 2 Microbus, as it's now officially known, has been produced in Brazil since September 2, 1957, making it the longest continually produced model in automotive history.

In those 56 years - and despite the more than 1.5 million Kombis produced

- it has managed to avoid the growing

'nanny laws' that have seemingly gripped the rest of the western world.

But now, perhaps inevitably, the loveable Camper's time has run out, due to new safety regulations in Brazil itself.”

Yesterday we took a couple of Ubers to and from the dentist, a modern practice like any you might see in the United States. 

Tooth cleaning, cavity filling, whatever is needed with an English speaking dentist at a fraction of the cost of care in the US.  And we rode there in a Fiat Strada and came back in a Renault Sandero, cars never imagined at home. 

Another day in Brazil.