ABSTRACT
The automobile industry has frequently been considered a major element of the so-called “Brazilian Economic Miracle” of high economic growth and booming exports [Stevens, 1987, p. 4] · Total production of passenger cars and commercial vehicles roughly tripled in both decades 1960–1970 and 1970–1980 [ANFAVEA, a, c]. Starting from very low export values, overseas sales of automobiles increased considerably in the 1970s. The Brazilian automobile industry was held up as a unique model, since, among the many developing countries that have attempted to create a full-fledged automobile industry, it stood for the only one that had succeeded in the early 1980s [Prudďhomme, 1983b; O’Brien, Lobo Aleu, 1984, p. 133; Sinclair, 1983, p. 45]. Other developing countries may follow in the near future, South Korea standing for the most likely candidate. This sharply contrasts with earlier presumptions: in the mid-1970s, nearly all experts interviewed by Dicke [1978, pp. 81 ff.] agreed that developing countries would hardly be able to compete successfully in international automobile markets in the foreseeable future.
