The Brazilian Willys

[Gordie]

I just received my March 2018 issue of Hemmings Classic Car and there is a nice seven page article on the history of Willys in Brazil from 1952-1972.  A great read that is nicely illustrated.  Ford bought into Willys and it is interesting to see Willys with Ford emblems and station wagons and pick-ups with a large "FORD" stamped into the tailgates.  They were called Ford Willys.
This article is about passenger cars and mentions that more Aero's were built in Brazil than the United States.

[MarkH]

Got my copy a couple days ago but put it on the "unread" stack without even cracking it open till I saw your post. Just took a quick look and that's quite a nice write up! That issue just moved to the head of the line.
I've always thought that photo of Brook Stevens next to the '63 model was pure '60's cool, and those hooded headlights makes that model my favorite of all the Brazil designs.
I've been in an off & on discussion with a Darrin guy on whether or not the  dual carb engine had a cam upgrade or not. So far nothing has turned up about a different cam. As a result though, my wife helped (for me) to painstakingly translate a few paragraphs gleaned from a couple Brazil Aero books a couple weeks ago and I stumbled across something I've always suspected. According to one book, the hood and door skins were the same throughout the entire production series.
Also included were photos of some Ford Aero prototypes, pretty much Aero bodies with something resembling Ford Galaxy front fenders, hood & grill.
Ford supposedly got the F-head up to 135hp, I think in the Maverick. Ran into cooling issues on the #6 cylinder so those engines had an external coolant line delivering more coolant to the rear cylinder. That engine also had a modern spin on oil filter at the oil pump, with the exhaust manifold dumping at the rear of the engine.
The Brazilians did some really cool stuff with the Aero and a lot can be found on Brazil websites. It's easy to copy & paste text from those sites into Bing Translator to get a pretty decent translation.

[joefrazer]

The translation isn't perfect and some of the linked photos won't display, but a good read anyway.

http://www.angelfire.com/wi/willys/aerous.html

[Bob G]

Very interesting to read. Somewhat like "and now for the rest of the story." Thanks

[Aeroman]

Jose Penteado Vignoli co-authored the Brazilian books on the Aeros built there. I've never met him but we have been corresponding for maybe 35 years. When I first "met" him, he was driving a 1952 Aero Eagle - rare in Brazil. It got destroyed in a crash and he got an Itamaraty that I believe he still owns. He supplied me with the Brazilian production figures that Pat Foster quotes in the article, they can be found on the Aero website listed in my signature below.
The black '63 in the picture (in the article) with Brooks Stevens standing next to it was in Brooks's museum for many years then was owned by Bill Tilden after Brooks passed away. Bill's estate is ready to sell it. See pics taken last summer.

[joefrazer]

Not long before Bill passed away, he and I talked about the sale of the car. I was interested but Bill's $20K asking price was just too steep. I'm not sure what the family wants for it today.

[MarkH]

....................The black '63 in the picture (in the article) with Brooks Stevens standing next to it was in Brooks's museum for many years then was owned by Bill Tilden after Brooks passed away. Bill's estate is ready to sell it. See pics taken last summer................

That's pretty cool it ended up in the States. I heard a while back there was a 2600 for sale here, must be the one. Wonder what it's priced at, not that there's a hole in my "to do" list, or enough slack in the budget.