Amazonas 1600
AMAZONAS 1600
CYCLE WORLD TEST
THE BIKE FROM BRAZIL: A TOURING MACHINE FOR THOSE WHO DARE TO BE DIFFERENT
WHAT IT IS.IS DIFFERENT. Very different. There simply is no other word for the Amazonas, a titanic, made-in-Brazil touring bike draped loosely around a 1600cc Volkswagen Beetle engine.
In fact, the Amazonas is so differ ent that Cycle World gave it a perma nent place in infamy when we in cluded the bike in last April's "The Ten Worst Motorcycles," a parody of our annual Ten Best awards. That se lection was inappropriate, perhaps. since we'd never actually ridden an Amazonas, although we had sent nu merous telexes to the factory in Brazil requesting a test machine. Still, we joked about the bike's abundant size with quips such as, "There's no jus tification for a bike so big that, whenever it passes a bus stop. everyone stands up and digs for change." -
Shortly after that issue hit the newsstands. Guilherme Hannud, the new director of Amazonas Motoci cletas Especiais. paid us a visit. He told us that our Ten Worst" parody hadn't exactly caused champagne corks and confetti to fly back at the home office, but he admitted that the notoriety at least had put the Amazo nas in the public eye. And to Hannud that was important. because his com pany was planning to enter the U.S. market soon. He also mentioned that a complete Amazonas was about to be shipped to Houston for dem onstration purposes, and, if we were interested, we could test it.
Shortly thereafter. David Edwards, Ci'cle World's Feature Editor, was winging toward Texas to begin a 2000-mile return tour, which would constitute the first North American test of the bike from South America.
Sitting in a dusty warehouse in Houston. the big. blue Amazonas looked every bit as huge as its public ity photos had promised. In reality, the bike, at 846 pounds dry, is not that much heavier than more-con ventional touring bikes: it's just that all that weight is distributed over such an incredibly long wheelbase and wrapped in so many slab-sided. fiberglass panels that the Amazonas tends to take on an imposing, larger than-life stature.
Closer inspection of the Amazonas unearths some curious, even amus ing~ features. The crudely cast alum i num floorboards, for example. not only have an embossed diamondtread pattern, but also are the show case for a pitted likeness of the United States' war eagle. Then there is the front brake lever bracket, a massive, abundantly ribbed tribute to Brazilian excess. The bracket houses the lever, the master cylinder and the electric-start button, and it incorpo rates part ofan actual master cylinder from a Volkswagen. And getting up close and personal with what Amazo nas calls "graphics" reveals paint that is uneven, stripes that don't quite match up, and amateurish, stenciled lettering that includes over spray at no extra charge.
Altogether. the Amazonas is equipped with enough quirky details to give the impression of being a oneoff homebuilt put together by a rea sonably talented enthusiast who had a VW engine in his garage and some spare time on his hands. And, in fact. that's not far from the truth. To understand how the Amazonas
came to life, you first have to know a little about the Brazilian economy. Without getting bogged down in bal ance-of-trade deficits and spiraling interest rates, suffice it to say that Brazil's economy is bad, and has been so for some time. Years ago, in an effort to bolster local industries, Brazil stopped importing many for eign products, including motorcycles and motorcycle parts. One result was that the country's civilian and mili tary policemen ended up riding fleets of worn-out, patched-together Har ley-Davidsons that had been bought before the embargo. And there was no hope of getting new replacement bikes or proper spare parts.
Enter one Daniel Rodriguez, an engineer who figured he could put to gether an all-Brazilian motorcycle and corner the police-bike market in that country. Engine choice was sim ple: a Volkswagen plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, had been (and still is) churn ing out entire VW Beetles, including engines, since the Fifties. Thus, the venerable. 1 5 84cc air-cooled flat Four was the obvious choice for Ro driguez' all-national police bike.
i~he frame and run~ing gear Rodri guez built to surround that Beetle en gine, while nowhere near modern motorcycle standards, sufficiently impressed Brazilian officials that Amazonas was awarded a govern ment contract for police bikes: and in 1977, the first machines rolled out of the company's Sao Paulo shop.
Ironically, Señor Rodriguez' cre ation has proven so reliable that it has almost put him out of business. To day, eight years after the first model was sold, Amazonas has saturated the home police market. And with some of the more-robust bikes racking up as many as 250,000 miles with little more than engine changes, there isn't a lot of repeat business. What's more, given the rather poor state of the roads in Brazil, there isn't much of a civilian touring market: so, just as Volkswagen did in the late Forties, the Amazonas company has turned its attention to the USA.
Amazonas can take heart in the VW analogy, because when that odd ly shaped, rear-engined car made its American debut in 1 949, only two were sold, and experts predicted that it would have no future in the Land of the V-Eight. A few years later, VW was well on its way to selling almost a half-million Bugs per year in the U.S. Amazonas' plans aren't nearly so ambitious. The 20-man factory is ca pable of giving birth to 1000 bikes a year, but company officials would be tickled to sell 200 in the U.S. in 1986. That number seems attainable, given the huge number of Beetlemaniacs on the loose in this country.
Amazonas will not, however, try to get its first U.S.-bound motorcycles past the EPA's pollution sniffers, be cause the company has little extra cash for such things. Instead, the bikes will be sold without engines, and the owner will have to supply his own prime-mover. And to make the buying of an Amazonas easier, they will be sold as three-phase kit-bikes. Phase I will be the frame and suspen sion; Phase II the fiberglass body pieces, along with gauges and other
various mechanical bits; Phase III the finishing parts. Each phase will cost approximately $ 1 500, or a pricetag of $4500 for a complete chassis in search of an engine. That engine could cost as little as $300 for a junk yard special, or run to $ 10,000 for a full-house, 250-plus-horsepower dragstrip-ravager. Most buyers, though, will probably opt for a slightly breathed-on engine, one that puts out about 100 hp and costs about $650. That adds up to a total cost of $5150, still a bit less than a bare-bones Honda Gold Wing.
Then again, the Amazon~ is far less of a motorcycle than the Gold Wing. In terms of performance, for example, the Amazonas isn't even re
motely in the same league. The 50-hp version we sampled was barely able to out-accelerate a stock VW Beetle, despite weighing 1000 pounds less, and its top speed is a meager 91 mph. Of course, the horsepower deficiency is easily remedied with help from any number of aftermarket VW speed shops (see "Revenge of the Amazo nas," pg. 34).
Not o easily taken care of are the Amazonas' handling abnormalities. At speeds below 15 mph, the bike steers with all the heaviness and im precision of a `59 Plymouth Belve dere with a broken power-steering pump. Add to this an awkward, 31inch seat height and a torque-reac tion twitch that makes a BMW's seem insignificant by comparison, and you've got the makings of some inter esting moments during first-gear ma neuvers. As speeds increase, the bike becomes much more stable, al though-due to the bike's extremely low center of gravity and a profile that is greatly affected by sidewindsit does tend to wander slightly.
In spite of those occasion~ mean derings, however, the Amazonas is by far at its happiest when cruising along a straight, smooth highway. There, at 70 mph with the engine turning a calm 3000 rpm, the Amazonas comes into its own. The footboards, handle bar and mirrors are free of vibration. Sitting on the broad, comfortable saddle and protected from gusts by the surprisingly effective, handlebar mounted windscreen, the Amazonas pilot is free to pile up the miles, helped along by the chunky, 8.2-galion fuel tank that yields a 380-mile range. And an Amazonas rider can attack 1000-mile days secure in the knowledge that 20 million Beetles
have built up an unsurpassed reliabilty record, and that if some thing were to go awry with the en gine, just about any mechanic intelli gent enough to find the sharp end of a screwdriver could get the Amazonas on the road again.
Things are less reassuring when the Amazonas is pushed hard along a twisting road. The bike really doesn't like to bend its way around a corner at anything faster than a pure sight seeing pace: and used hard, the brakes-lifted from a VW Karmann Ghia-fade quickly. Also conspiring to keep speeds down on backroads are the Amazonas' suspension com ponents, which can best be described as primitive. The rear shocks are sprung so firmly that they rarely move. The chrome-plated front fork, a third-generation Rodriguez design, has so much seal stiction that it can't respond to small road irregularities, and it hydraulic-locks itself into use lessness when the front wheel hits larger bumps in quick succession.
In spite of this rather lengthy list of criticisms, however, the Amazonas is surprisingly competent in its touring role, especially in view of the bike's utilitarian ancestry-and the lack of funds the company has at its disposal for research and development. Still, those in charge know that the bike has a long way to go. Already a fourinch-lower frame is being built, and larger saddlebags and a tour trunk are slated to replace the too-small police panniers now in use. Amazonas offi cials say it should be easy for the bike to lose 70 to 80 pounds, and they claim that the bike's fit and finish soon will be drastically improved.
Even with those sorts of refine ments, though, the Amazonas is like ly to remain so different that it'll never be considered an outstanding motorcycle by anyone. But even if the Amazonas, in its current, far from-perfect form, isn't outstanding, it does stand out. And for that, in this age of ever-increasing sameness, it should receive some kind of award.~
AMAZONAS 1600
$4500
