Model T for modern times.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Brazilian cars

The decorative sticker affixed to a window on every vehicle that rolls off the assembly line sums it all up. A flag-shaped field of green sports the toy-like outline of a little yellow car with blue tires. The visual reference to the Brazilian flag is an appeal to nationalistic pride. The sticker's printed message is more direct: "The problem is ours. The solution is ours as well."

The problem, as Joao Augusto Conrado do Amaral Gurgel sees it, is his country's multinational auto industry. The solution: his tiny, self-conceived BR-800 -- Brazil's first wholly domestically-designed and manufactured automobile.

"Ford started just like this," he boldly informs a group of potential investors from the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceara who are paying a visit to the Gurgel Motores plant. As Gurgel conducts the tour in the driver's seat of an experimental electric vehicle his firm has designed, he makes other references to the auto pioneer who is clearly his idol. Indeed, Joao Gurgel sees himself as the henry Food of Brazil, translating the genius of the world's first mass-production vehicle, Ford's Model T, into his answer to the personal transportation needs of the masses in the 1990s, his BR-800.

Gurgel's love of autos and his maverick nature go back to his days as a student at Sao Paulo's Polytechnical School. "In 1949, for my final project, I brought the professor a design for a two-cylinder car," the engineer recalls. "But he said, 'Gurgel, we're not going to see this design, because I tell you one thing, we don't make cars, we buy them!'"

Yet within seven years, Brazil had launched what would become Latin America's most successful automotive industry. First, it was the Volkswagen Beetle, followed by Ford and General Motors models from the U.S. and, more recently, the Italian Fiat.

Today, Brazil produces over one million cars a year and a growing number of trucks, buses and specialty vehicles. In addition to providing for all of its own transportation needs, the industry also has become an important player in the export market. Fiat Automoveis S.A., for instance, now ships its vehicles to 47 nations, including Italy, the Fiat's birthplace. Brazilian-made parts, engines and totally fabricated autos are finding their way into virtually every market in the world, from the poorest of the developing nations to the most industrialized.

Although some design modifications have been engineered in the country, Brazilian autos belong to the category...