Polystilo Savana

If there's one place on earth that never ceases to bring me to my knees in utter weird car confusion, it's Brazil.

Don't believe me? Go back in time at past WCOTD from Brazil and you'll soon be confused enough to read the rest of this story.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, independent car constructor Wladimir Martins, and his company Wladimir Martins Veículos (WMV) had been building its own models, the WMV and WM II, using mainly Volkswagen components. When Brazil decided to incentivize alcohol-fuelled cars, WMV became Polystilo Indústria e Comércio and showed off the Savana in 1983 at its first public show.

A key attribute of the Savana, owing to the company's prior experience in fibreglass-bodied cars, was that its convertible structure was a unibody. How? Easy: they'd molded an entire tube frame chassis into the fibreglass—making the car very strong and very heavy.

Shortening the Chevrolet Opala chassis by 25 centimetres didn't save much weight. Pulling from the GM parts bin, buyers could choose automatic or manual transmissions, as well as between a 2.5-litre 4-cylinder engine or 4.1-litre 6-cylinder engine, alcohol-fuelled or made to run on regular gasoline.

Finished inside and out more like a luxury car, about 55 Savanas were built before the operation went under.