Continuing with my special Kombi Week, this time a very special version of the Corujinha, the Ambulance!
By nature, Ambulances need to have space. It’s also desirable that they’re reliable and easy to maintain, so the paramedics won’t let someone that choked with an olive die because the ambulance won’t start. The VW Bus, although a bit slow, fulfilled all those requisites!
This model is pretty special: It wasn’t sold anywhere! It is a subscriber-only gift for those who subscribed to DeAgostini’s Brazilian car collection.
I recall that, some time ago, when I told about a diecast subscription it caused a little fuss. Thing is: DeAgostini is a magazine and book publisher. But their magazines come with nifty collectibles as gifts. This is why they’re sold at news stands. In the end of the collection you have several short magazines and some hard covers to bind them together, so you take it all to a book binder and you get lovely books.
This collection was comprised of 100 numbers, each one with a short 20 or so pages volume and 4 hard covers to bind everything together. In the end we get four hefty books, with more than 2000 pages in total covering the history of the car in the world, in Brazil, and of each model.
Being magazines, they offer subscriptions! But unlike most of other magazines, you don’t get a better price by subscribing... However, you’re protected from any price rise that always happens on the news stands, and every month you receive two or three models at home, with the magazines. It also keeps you free from scalpers or distribution problems. Neat, huh?
And the price protection is sweet. When I subscribed, each model costed R$49,99, so this was the price I payed per model until the very last one. However, on the news stands, when I was receiving my last models the price rose to a whopping R$63,99!
For those who iHWEpped with me (that sounded way better than I thought it would be), this is the reason some models have different prices. Those who got to the news stands recently cost more than those older ones.
As a final bonus on this model, it has black license plates. In Brazil they’re exclusive to collector vehicles: Cars with more than 30 years and with, at least, 80% of originality. Being a collectors’ and subscribers’ only model, it’s very appropriated.
That’s it! I hope you liked and stay tuned for the next episode!