This car is the Brazilian made SP2. After taking up the offer to travel Brazil in 1968, it was drawn and designed by Dr Rudolf Leiding and his team (one of the team was his wife). The car made it to production in 1971 and was named after the city of Sao Paulo. This car was based on what seemed to be an altered Type 411 chassis and new 64 bhp 1.7 type 4 pancake engine. It's shape was like no other Volkswagen at the time. I have read there was also a lesser spec'd SP1 which was not well received. However 10000 SP2 cars were sold with very few unofficially exported out of Brazil.
Thanks for the info mate I recon that car would have done well in europe this is also interesting : http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5029474-Volkswagen-Gol-a-Brazilian-success-story
SP2 Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure that SP2 was based on the torsion-bar Type 3 VW chassis / platform ( not Type 4 / 411, which had coil-spring suspension front and rear ) and the engine was a bored out ( bigger cylinders ) version of the 1600 cc Type 3 pancake engine, rather than the 411 unit. I remember seeing quite a few of them when I was on holiday in Brazil back in the late 80s, and ran a feature on one in VW Motoring magazine many years ago, that had been imported to Cornwall, via Saudi... :-) Neil Birkitt (Editor, Volkswagen Driver magazine)
I could well be wrong on the chassis as well as the engine origins. Do you have the feature on this car available Neil?
