The Volkswagen SP2 Is The Sexiest Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

Due to import restrictions, VW's Brazilian arm built itself a sports car. Despite looking pretty damn hot, its performance was anything but scorching, however it's become a cult hero. Here's everything you need to know about the sexiest slow car ever made...
The Volkswagen SP2 Is The Sexiest Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

If you didn’t know any better, you’d be forgiven for thinking the beautiful slice of 1970s sports car design you see above is from some low volume Italian manufacturer, but actually it’s a Volkswagen that was sold exclusively in Brazil.

To make sense of the Volkswagen SP2, you need to understand how it came to be. In the 1970s, Brazil was closed to imported cars. To get around this, VW had a Brazilian subsidiary that could build cars in the country to sell, including the Karmann Ghia - also painfully pretty, by the way - right up until it was retired. When a slightly hotter replacement went on sale in Europe, the Brazilians noticed it wasn’t selling well, and in their wisdom, decided to build their own version. The Karmann Ghia TC was born. It’s considered a failure now, but it demonstrates that Volkswagen do Brasil was allowed a certain level of independence from its German bosses.

The Volkswagen SP2 Is The Sexiest Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

In 1969, the Brazilian arm of VW decided it wanted to work on something completely different to what could be bought elsewhere, and with permission from Wolfsburg, ‘Project X’ was born. The idea was to signal the company’s independence from Europe, but building a car from the ground up is damn expensive, so the new sports car had to be based on something the company already sold in Brazil.

The SP2 was therefore built on the frame of the Volkswagen Type III, though it shared a little too much with that compact car to be considered truly sporty. For example, it had the same air-cooled engine - though it was bored out to 1.7-litres - producing a feeble 75bhp. The flat-four engine earned the nickname ‘pancake’ due to the fact it was so low, while the car earned the less affectionate nickname of ‘Sem Potência’, which means ‘without power’ in Portuguese. The name was fully warranted; at the time its 0-60mph was recorded in the region of 16 seconds - proof that even if a car is lightweight, it still needs some power.

The Volkswagen SP2 Is The Sexiest Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

Volkswagen claims that the car was essentially brought to fruition by just six men and one woman. The solitary female member of the team was Helga Leiding, the wife of Rudolf Leiding, VW Brazil’s then CEO and future boss of VW. She was drafted in to cast her eye over the design and features of the SP2, since her husband wanted the car to appeal to women - in a later interview, he said he had built the car just for her - “for you and all the other ladies.”

Unfortunately, when Leiding moved to Germany to take over VW, he didn’t bring the SP2 to market with him - the car didn’t fit in with the company’s new front-wheel drive, water-cooled direction, and required too many modifications to be sold in other markets compared to Europe’s Scirocco.

The Volkswagen SP2 Is The Sexiest Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

Very few SP2s survive today, partly because they were rarely exported to other markets, but also because they suffered a great deal from rust. It’s a shame, because despite its wheezy powerplant, the SP2 is arguably the prettiest Volkswagen ever made.

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Comments

Ivan Carolino

The SP2 didn’t had too much sucess, because it was very expensive, and disputated market with more luxury and powerful cars, like Chevrolet Opala (derived from Opel Rekord C) and later with Ford Maverick and Dodge Charger (the brazilian version, is a Dart modificated to look like the american one)… All that models was one of the most expensive cars from entire country… Without mention the Puma’s that became very popular down here…

03/09/2016 - 22:01 |
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Anonymous

Man i love these cars. A lil tune in the heads and using 2 weber 40 running on ethanol its all the car needs. They are damn hard to find and the ones u see are soo expensive or a pile of rust. If u want more brazilian cars u can search for vw puma (or puma vw and puma gt)

03/09/2016 - 23:00 |
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Anonymous

Try googling Gurgel and be amazed on the simplicity for city cars

03/09/2016 - 23:05 |
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Anonymous

Thank you CarThrottle for remembering one of the greatest cars ever sold here in Brazil.

03/09/2016 - 23:57 |
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Anonymous

knew this car because of this nice artwork

03/10/2016 - 01:07 |
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Victor Pinheiro

I’m from Brazil and i’ve never heard of it before, until last week when i was lucky enough to see one in my house’s street. In the first moment i thought it was a VW Brasilia, but when i saw the coupe style back end… that car was gorgeous (it was the same paint scheme of the one in the picture)

03/10/2016 - 02:24 |
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Anonymous

There was a sp1, but it is so rare that many people dont believe it really existed.

03/10/2016 - 02:28 |
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leolino

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

It had the regular 1.6 engine. So, even slower. :-)

03/12/2016 - 16:36 |
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brazil touge

it’s so awesome to see posts about brazilian stuff, slhound talk about how vw took the modfied sceene in brazil by storm with the gol( YES, NOT GOLF) the fusca ( our name for beetle) brasilia and many others, not only vw but chevrolet also did awesome things with the opala our variant of a german chevy car, ford mavericks and many others! and a volkswagen gol gti as an example

03/10/2016 - 04:46 |
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suchdoge

IMO the Karmann Gaia was prettier.

03/10/2016 - 11:13 |
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ZucO DS

Just look at my avatar picture thingy.. Love it!

03/10/2016 - 15:03 |
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