It's well known the first generation of the Volkswagen Voyage, rebadged as Fox, was a captive import in the United States and Canada through mid-'80s to early-'90s, having received a considerable amount of modifications to comply with American regulations and address some demands of the American buyers, yet maybe the most important which was the absence of an automatic transmission had been neglected. Nowadays even in Brazil the demand for automatic transmissions skyrocketed in recent years, which at a first glance could make it sound fairly reasonable to expect sourcing econoboxes from Brazil as a safe bet to address the preferences of some conservative people who still prefer to avoid compact SUVs as a replacement for a more traditional car. However, different regulations pertaining mostly to safety and to a certain degree emissions render it much harder to make in Brazil a car which ultimately could have a comparatively lower sales volume once it reached American and Canadian dealerships...
Mexico on the other hand still gets some cars and light-duty commercial vehicles from both Brazil and Argentina because of a trade agreement with the Mercosur region, based on reciprocity which enables a Mexican car which doesn't comply to some specific Brazilian regulations such as lighting for instance being available in Brazil and vice-versa. And even though Mexican-made vehicles tend to fare better when it comes to safety, mostly based on economics of scale as exports to the United States and Canada play a pivotal role for the motor industry in Mexico, safety standards are much more lenient there, just like it is in Brazil or other countries such as China and even India which also export cars and light-duty commercial vehicles to Mexico. And since safety and fuel-efficiency regulations in the United States in recent decades favored SUVs, which have an inherently higher profit margin, the cost of picking some random Brazilian econobox and upgrading it to comply with NHTSA crash standards would be harder for both Americans and Brazilians, while making smaller batches of a nearly-customized version only for export would be simply out of question...
