Three reasons why you wouldn’t really buy a Brazilian Ute

January 8, 2015

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[Editor’s Note: We’ve got folks writing for us in Canada, Australia, Finland, and England… and now I’d like to welcome Gerardo Solis to the Hooniverse, to give us some insight into that lovely part of the world we call South America.]
I know, pickup trucks are getting ever so big and ostentatious. The new ‘Mid-Size’ Chevrolet Colorado is roughly the size of a 2001 Silverado, and it’s considerably better equipped. They’re no longer vehicles but rather more akin to luxury cars. A Replacement for the Lincoln Town Car and the Cadillac DeVille, if you will.
It’d be so much better if pickups were simpler, like those little ones they sell in Brazil. Well, greener as the grass may look you’ll have to trust me on this, you wouldn’t buy one, and here are five reasons why…

1. It’ll be expensive.
Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that General Motors takes complete leave of its senses and decides that it’ll import their Montana Pickup truck into the good ‘ol US-of-A. Well, how much would you be willing to pay for it? $15,000? $17,000? Well, sorry to burst your bubble but you’ll have to pay quite a bit more for it. The truck already costs $15,000 as-is in Brazil, then you have to import it to the U.S which, by itself will add 25% to the price thanks to the all-powerful and all-annoying Chicken tax.

That’s before you add how much it’ll cost to federalize it and ensure it won’t crumple like a Datsun Go when tested. Did I mention that its parent car scored a grand total of 0 stars for safety in NCAP testing? That won’t look good on all the marketing they’ll have to do to sell it.
Bottom line? You’re looking at a sticker of around at least $20,000 before any options. By any, we really mean any options. The optional equipment includes air conditioning, central locking, and a height adjustable steering column. You know what else is around that price? The much bigger and more practical Colorado.

Pictured: Federalization costs

Now at this point you’re probably thinking, “Oh, that’s no problem. I’ll just buy one used and let someone else take the depreciation hit” Well, you’ve just entered the magical world of the gearhead depreciation paradox. This happens when someone really wants a car but not enough to actually buy it new, hoping they will be able to find it in the used market.
Unfortunately these vehicles are often so specialized that most people interested think the same way. So it doesn’t sell. And this one especially won’t sell. One reason is that it only comes with a manual gearbox, while another is…
2.It’ll be painfully slow.
Credit where credit’s due, if you’re very good at packing you can fit up to 1556 lb. on the Montana’s 6’1” bed. VW’s Saveiro is very very slightly more generous at 1569 lb., though at 5’ 5” it’s actually less practical than the Chevy. Still they both have more payload capacity than the outgoing Toyota Tacoma in any guise. It’s nice, until you realize what you will have to move all that at one point or another.

The Saveiro will try to move it with a 1.6L engine, no turbo, and just 100HP. Unladen it’ll do 0-60 in 11 seconds, or around the same it takes a turbocharged two-cylinder Fiat 500 to do the same. There’s no word on how long will it take it with a full load in the back, maybe there’s some poor guy still going in circles in a test track trying to find out.
Compared to the VW, the Montana is a veritable hot rod with its Multi Point Fuel Injected 1.8 mill producing an amazing 105 HP but it’s somehow even slower, taking 12.3 seconds to reach the big number.
A time which scholars have qualified as “slower than the passage of time when listening to a 6-hour dissertation on why cake is delicious”. I ask you, would you like to haul your old drawer on the freeway on something with that blistering performance? I thought not.
3.You can get a lot better locally.
So you’ve decided that you don’t care about the performance being as lacking as The Interview’s humor minus the hype; nor do you care that’s as overpriced as those balancing armbands which look suspiciously like normal armbands with a little foil paper in the middle. You decide you want something small, practical, and with a manual gearbox.

So what, then, is wrong with a Tacoma? Or a last-generation Chevrolet Colorado? Those were still the size of a true compact pickup truck. Besides, the market for small pickups is about to get a lot more interesting with the appearance of the new Tacoma and the new Frontier dangling diesel goodness ever closer to us as it inches it’s way to replace its aging sibling.

The Brazilian Utes, impressive as they are now, are really born out of restrictions and sheer necessity. Over the years, they’ve evolved from a Corsa/VW Gol that was strategically hit with a Sawzall into fully credited (albeit unibody) members of the pickup truck club.
If the restriction weren’t there however, I’m sure they’d have just imported Silverados.

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Gerardo Solis