|
 The idea of a group of businessmen from the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina of building a genuinely Brazilian car is about to come out of the oven.
The four-wheel drive jeep initially named "Project A4" will be officially released at the Car Salon, to take place in São Paulo, in October 2006.
Sales will begin in 2007, but the factory is going to start operating in April next year. With this, for the first time in history, the state of Santa Catarina will have a carmaker.
Before the release, however, there is a schedule to be followed. Up to March 2006 three prototypes will be built for testing.
The history of the project began in 2001, when mechanical engineer Adolfo César dos Santos created a prototype of a jeep from a damaged pick-up truck.
The most recent chapter took place on Friday, July 15, when Santos and the president of the Federation of Industries of the State of Santa Catarina (Fiesc), José Fernando Xavier Faraco, announced the choice of Joinville, in the north of the state, to house Tecnologia Automotiva Catarinense S.A. (TAC), the official name of the carmaker, which may be translated to Automotive Technology of the State of Santa Catarina.
The city was chosen as it is an important industrial hub and as the city hall is going to provide incentives for the purchase of a piece of land close to the BR-101 highway, where the factory will be built. The assembly line will initially cover an area of 3,000 square meters.
The A4 has the support of the Santa Catarina Automotive Project, established by the Fiesc with the objective of stimulating the sector in the state.
Despite having various auto parts factories, Santa Catarina does not yet have a carmaker. Santos himself is a director at the federation and is currently the president of the TAC.
"We have made the company official, a stock company with closed capital, but that is already born within the rules of the 'new market' for a possible opening of the capital in future," stated the engineer.
Initially, five investors started sponsoring the project, and more recently another 12 shareholders came in. Apart from that, the company has put on the market 200,000 shares for the value of US$ 1 million, and over US$ 680,000 in shares have already been sold.
"When we presented the model, last year, the answer was very positive, both in the point of view of investor and of suppliers," stated Santos.
Up to now, according to Santos, US$ 6.4 million have been invested in the project. The partners are, most of them, the owners of auto parts industries.
As one of the objectives of the project is to provide incentives to the local industry, a large share of the parts will be produced in Santa Catarina.
According to Santos, 100% of the components developed especially for the car, like the chassis and body, are made in the state. The jeep for urban and off-road use will have two Volkswagen engine options: 1.8-litre dual fuel, possibly adaptable to natural gas, or 1.9-litre diesel.
Production and Export
The estimate, according to Santos, is that the assembly line should employ 30 people in the first year of production. In the third year it is expected that production may have reached 1,200 units produced per year.
Even before release of the vehicle on the market, Santos is already mentioning the possibility of export.
"Every industrial project is born considering both markets, so as to be able to live with the seasonal aspect," he said.
"The car is already born with the task of showing Brazil and the world the potential of the state of Santa Catarina," he concluded.
Anba - www.anba.com.br
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.