From a South African newspaper............
With their unique air-cooled engines sputtering to life, brand-new classic Volkswagen (VW) minivans chug off the assembly line after a manufacturing ritual barely changed since hippies turned the boxy vehicle into a counterculture icon.
Instead of heading on long, strange trips across Latin America's largest country, these minivans go straight to work on the streets of Brazil's largest cities for deliveries of all kinds, as ambulances, mobile convenience stores and even troop transports for soldiers.
But this Friday, a long chapter in the history of Volkswagen AG ends when the last air-cooled engine will be hoisted into a vehicle seen as a museum piece almost everywhere else across the planet.
VW is being forced to change the minivan's historic rear-mounted engine because of a new Brazilian emissions law to reduce pollution that goes into effect in 2006. Production will continue next year, but the van known as the "Kombi" will get a new water-cooled engine and a radiator for the first time.
The switch marks the last hurrah for the simple engine developed in the 1930s by famed German engineer Ferdinand Porsche, his key element of a "Volkswagen," or "People's Car" that anyone could afford.
"It's the end of a very long era," said Ivan McCutcheon, editor of Britain's VolksWorld magazine for fans of the vans and now-out-of-production VW traditional Beetles. "The VW air-cooled engine has been perhaps the greatest produced engine in numbers the world has seen."
64vwmark Fahrvergnugen
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