The absence of comfort features formerly regarded as a luxury such as power steering and air conditioning, or even a basic forced ventilation which may be redundant while driving without the canvas top yet actually quite handy when a pouring rain makes the "winter top" a must even on summertime, is harder for an overwhelming majority of the Brazilian car buying public, so not even the predictably low manufacturing cost of a buggy bodyshell would render it suitable to address the needs and preferences of most new car buyers in Brazil anymore. Despite it also being possible to fit some cargo restraint devices such as racks, in order to eventually serve to the same purpose of a regular car, the practicality inherent to a hatchback or a sedan turns them into a safer bet, while a dune buggy is now mostly seen as just a curiosity on a trip to the Beach Park in Fortaleza. So, while it could be eventually possible to rely on a dune buggy as the only motor vehicle for a household, and resort to minor adaptations to enhance its suitability to the task, a fierce competition not only against a strictly conservative economy car but also against SUVs with a clearly focus on the recreational usage are quite hard to overcome...
Monday, March 04, 2024
Are dune buggies the vehicle category facing the fiercest competition?
Having been usually built upon repurposed Volkswagen frames from models such as the Beetle, dune buggies used to have a much broader appeal in Brazil prior to the market reopening for imported cars, which brought modern SUVs and turned them into the new craze among the urban Brazilian middle and upper classes. Safety and emission laws also rendered it harder for buggy factories to keep a full production volume, even though the usage of as many components from some mainstream cars as possible could enable the economics of scale, to the point that now ABS brakes and even dual airbags can be fitted to some buggy models in Brazil, not to mention the downsizing with turbocharged 1.0L 3-cylinder engines replacing the EA827 and EA111 engines which themselves were a replacement for the venerable air-cooled boxer engine once Volkswagen phased it out. But the traditions which made buggies retain a foothold on the coastline of the Nordeste (Paraíba/Bahia/Ceará) region were not really enough to be an effective contender to other categories such as compact hatchbacks and sedans which are still prevalent within the entry-level segment in the Brazilian market.
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