When I was at university in the early-to-mid-1970s, there were two highly unusual and rather exotic sports coupés in the car park, both belonging to foreign students rather more affluent than me. One I knew, although I hadn't seen an example in the metal up to that point: it was a Lancia Fulvia Sport Zagato in salmon pink. As the most production-replicated of all Zagato creations it wasn't quite as much of a rarity as I presumed at the time, but to see one on the Sussex University campus was still quite special.
The other was quite unsettling. It was clearly a Volkswagen, but it was also a long-bonneted, stub-tailed, racy looking coupé. Two worlds collided in what was a very handsome and highly desirable-looking machine, far sleeker than anything to come out of Wolfsburg yet with every detail clearly honed to Volkswagen design principles. This particular GT was in bright yellow but it carried off the colour with authority. So, what was it?
It was a Volkswagen SP2, one of between 10,000 and 11,000 – estimates vary – made between 1972 and 1976 by Volkswagen of Brazil. Its styling, by the Brazilian subsidiary's own team of Márcio Piancastelli, José Vicente Martins Novita and George Yamashita Oba, cleverly incorporates a nose reminiscent of Wolfsburg's 412 model while the long bonnet suggests power beneath. There is none, of course, because the SP2 cleverly disguises the existence of the rear-mounted, air-cooled flat four inherited through the car's use of a VW Type 3 platform – 1500, 1600TL and others – beneath the seductive curves. Under the bonnet lie only a fuel tank and luggage.
Volkswagen of Brasil, as rendered in its native Portuguese, was well used to doing its own thing because imported cars were prohibitively expensive in Brazil during the 1970s. The company's boss, Rudolf Leiding, had joined Volkswagen in 1945 as it was reconstructed out of wartime ruins, ran the Brazilian operation from 1968 to 1971 where he masterminded the SP range's development (the initials stand for Sao Paolo), and the returned to Wolfsburg to become the parent company's CEO.