VW Gol: Brazilian proto-Impreza by VW?
The string of interesting and offbeat Volkswagens from the firm's Brazilian division is enough to fill a coffee-table book. The SP2, for example, is one of the prettiest variations ever laid atop Type III mechanicals, one that many die-hard Volks-fans in the United States have never heard of. The rest of the world probably knows better what VW do Brasil has wrought; forty-something years of cars we'd dearly love to roll here in The States, but which never came north. Eventually, a Brazilian VeeDub did head for los Estados Unidos.
Instead of Brasilias or Karmann Ghia TCs, we got the Fox. Known in Brazil as the Gol, which rode on its own BX platform, itself a derivate of the B1 platform that underpinned other VW and Audi products. Our Foxes were all sedans or wagons, but a recent troll of old car ads on Flickr turned up this masterpiece. Look carefully - we always thought the Fox transaxle looked a lot like the naughty bits of a Beetle. And there it is, a doghouse-shrouded 1300cc bit of air-cooled muscle mounted in the FRONT. Hot diggety, this thing has it all, 3-door hatch bodywork, a flat-four, and no pesky coolant to boil over in tropical climes. The closest you can come to something like this now is an Impreza hatch, which is an exponentially better car. That doesn't stop us from thinking about bolting that spare 1600DP into a Polo-Edition Fox and warping everyone's minds at the next Spring Dust-Off.
[Source: Flickr/Hugo90 - CC2.0]
The walls are closing in on Dean Kruse, head of the Indiana-based Kruse International auction house. In September, 
