Decline
A car named SP1 was also built, but due to its very poor performance (only 65 hp (48 kW) with a 1600 cc engine), it was soon discontinued. The same problem plagued the SP2. In fact, a malicious joke at that time was to relate the "SP2" name with "Sem Potência" ("Without Power", in Portuguese).
Despite its revolutionary look, the car failed to beat the Puma in performance. Although they used similar engines, the fiberglass Puma was much lighter. This resulted in low sales, and the SP was discontinued in February 1976.
With a total of 10,205 units made (670 of them exported, the majority 155 went to Nigeria with only one going to Europe, Portugal), the car is now sought-after as a valuable collector's item. One of them, in white, is in the VW museum on public display. While prices during the production time frame were roughly the same as the Beetle, the price of a well-preserved example today is considerably higher than contemporary VW models.
Read more about this topic: Volkswagen SP2
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)