Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Spotted on the wild: dedicated-ethanol Brazilian Chevrolet Monza

Just like the American Chevrolet Cavalier, the Brazilian Chevrolet Monza was a regional variant of the J-body platform, even though its styling and much of its technical features bore a greater resemblance to the Opel Ascona C, most noticeably the belt-driven SOHC Opel-designed Family II engine available from 1.6L up to 2.0L according to the model-year. As the Brazilian market in the '80s favored ethanol as a motor fuel, naturally the Monza also featured engines capable to operate on it, even though they were not flexfuel, still resorting to a carburettor due to local content regulations which prevented electronic fuel injection from becoming mainstream. Even though it's quite uncertain if this '90 Chevrolet Monza SL/E with the 2.0L engine still runs on ethanol as the ÁLCOOL badge implies, since it became usual to convert older dedicated-ethanol cars to gasoline after the ethanol crisis between '89 and '90 when even methanol from the United States had been imported as a somewhat desperate attempt to keep much of the Brazilian fleet running, seeing a car of that period still featuring a sign that it had been originally ethanol-powered before the flexfuel systems became mainstream is quite interesting.

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