Soccer-mad Brazilians bring the country to a halt during World Cup season so local automakers Volkswagen and Citroën are again selling special edition models linked to this year’s championship while all automakers plan to halt production temporarily so workers can watch the home team’s games.

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For the fourth time, Volkswagen has launched a special ‘Copa’ (‘Cup’, in Portuguese) edition of its top-selling Gol compact hatchback. The model has unique nose styling and more standard equipment than current versions of the Gol.


The automaker is building the special edition model with one-litre and 1.6-litre flexfuel engines and expects to sell 16,000 units, around 9% of total sales in 2005.


Previous Gol Copa models were launched in 1982, 1994 and 2002.


Citroën is also launching a special edition to pay homage to the World Cup. The Xsara Picasso special edition has a name – Seleção – Brazilans use for their five-times-world-champions national soccer team.

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Produced in PSA’s plant in Porto Real city, the Xsara Picasso Seleção – a five-seat minivan – has extra equipment such as a DVD player and leather upholstery and is on offer with 1.6-litre or 2.0-litre petrol engines.


Citroën Brazil expects to sell about 4,000 units, equivalent to 34% of last year’s total Picasso sales.


Also ‘leveraging’ World Cup fever, Citroen, Ford and General Motors plan to spend millions of dollars sponsoring TV transmissions of the cup games in Brazil.


Fiat and Ford will also have special games news sections on their Brazilian internet sites.


With or without special World Cup editions or sponsorship programmes, all local automakers will keep to one long-standing local soccer tradition: factory assembly lines will halt during the during the Brazilian team’s games so employees can watch the matches.


Rogério Louro