Paco Pacos – Die Knatterkisten vom Amazonas (360° - GEO Reportage)

The chassis comes from an old Toyota, the seats from a VW bus, and the engine from a water pump once used in gold prospecting. Assembled, these individual parts create a Paco-Paco. The sound of the engine gave Brazil's only car brand its name. "360° - The GEO Report" shows how the Paco Pacos are built and how indispensable they are to the people of the Peixoto region. A film by Jan Hinrik Drevs © 2004, licensed by MedienKontor / ARTE Subscribe to wocomoTRAVEL: https://goo.gl/tIk2Qc Follow us on Facebook:   / wocomo   Press release: The rugged northwest of Brazil is home to unique vehicles: the Paco Pacos. In the late 1980s, many fortune seekers and adventurers came to the sleepy town of Peixoto. They wanted to search for gold in this area. But the boom was short-lived. When the gold miners left, they left behind a lot of scrap metal and water pumps. Jair Graff was the first to discover that the pumps' three-cylinder diesel engines could also be used very effectively to power a vehicle. Since then, he has built over 460 Paco Pacos. Their robust bodies are assembled from the individual parts of various car models. These unique vehicles are very popular – they are ideally suited for field work and transport in rough terrain and can usually be repaired with a few hammer blows. But the existence of the Paco Pacos is threatened. The reason: Even in this remote jungle region, a road traffic code is to be introduced. And for that, cars whose floors are sometimes made of wooden planks and which sometimes drive without brakes are considered a danger. Jair Graff sees his livelihood threatened and is therefore looking for ways to convince the authorities of the necessity of the Paco Pacos. His latest idea: together with his colleagues, he is organizing a demonstration in the form of a Paco Paco off-road race.