DKW-VEMAG Candango

You may recognize this as the DKW Munga, and yes — it is. Mostly.

Its name originally reflected a deep history among slaves, prisoners, and racial classifications brought to Brazil by the Portuguese, until the word 'candango' evolved again to have a deeper connection to a specific place that many immigrant workers helped to build — in only 41 months! — the architectural wonder of Brasília.

Brasília is, by all accounts, a visually futuristic city designed to be the administrative capital of Brazil. Planned by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, backed up by the expansive landscape designs of Roberto Burl Marx, its incredible architecture has earned Brasília a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. This mattered not during pro-Jair Bolsonaro riots in 2023 (specifically the Brazilian Congress attack), but I digress…

“Brasília is a singular artistic achievement, a prime creation of the human genius, representing, on an urban scale, the living expression of the principles and ideals advanced by the Modernist Movement and effectively embodied in the Tropics through the urban and architectural planning of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.” – UNESCO

Drawn in 1956, livable by 1960 — this architectural, centrally-planned marvel was the candangos’ work.

It’s impressive, sure, for engineers, architects and the like to envision how our cities and buildings will look, function, and mesh with the surrounding environment…

However, let’s not forget the hands that constructed the vision of those architects whose names are now in books, on plaques, and breathlessly lauded by organizations like UNESCO — what are their names — who built Brasília?

Whereas in most places, a few buildings or a singular mega project (bridge, tunnel, dam, highway etc) may attract a few thousand workers, Brasília was meant to be an entire frickin’ city, from sewer to highway to government offices, residential areas, newly conjoined lakes.

Imagine 50,000 people in this unfinished place, near a future city that only existed on paper, where half of the population were workers.

During construction, the candangos lived not in Brasília but in a nearby place called ‘Free Town’.

Land was free for anyone in Free Town, with the catch being there was little to do outside of build Brasília or support the workers who did — and that the entire thing would be demolished once the soon-to-be administrative capital city had been built. Only workers lived in this place, and they could never make it a home.

One of the clearest accounts from this, outside of Brazil, is from a period Architectural Review first-hand account from J.M. Richards in 1959:

“There is now a labour force of about 20,000 in Brasilia, including building and engineering workers, transport and tractor drivers and those engaged in road making and landscaping. They live for the most part in camps, hidden away in folds of the ground a little distance from the future built-up area. There is also, just west of the airport, which is near the southern tip of the residential belt, a temporary shopping and recreation centre for the working population, known as the ‘free town’ because any enterprising trader is free to set up there on the understanding that the whole place-which is mostly single-storey and timber-built-will be cleared away in a few years. The total population of Brasilia, including the inhabitants of the free town and others that ‘serve the needs of the construction workers, the administrators, transport workers, police and those who run the services already established there like the airport, the power-station and the hotel, is now about 45,000.” – J.M. Richards, Architectural Review

While it may look like the setting for a Sid Mead illustration, Brasília's poor infrastructure for pedestrians and massive spaces between major centres — Hotel Sector, Embassy Sector, etc. — are still best-visited by car.

Ironic, then, as the new-for-1958 Candango four-wheel-drive's performance was so poor on asphalt workers laid that many owners simply disconnected the driveshaft to the rear wheels.

In 1958, as the first four-door vehicle manufactured in Brazil, the car was called ‘Jipe’ for ‘Jeep’, but Willys Overland filed a lawsuit that left VEMAG officials needing to come up with a different name, Candango, in 1960.

Like the military versions of the Volkswagen Beetle, the Candango had somewhat mid origins. Although the Munga it is based on stood for Mehrzweck UNiversal Geländewagen mit Allradantrieb, or the much more catchy, "multi-purpose universal cross-country car with all-wheel drive," the light off-roader it featured a weedy two-stroke, 900cc 3-cylinder engine borrowed from the DKW 3=6 sedan. A four-speed transmission and a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph) were the other headline statistics.

In 1961, this buggy's motor was given a bump to an 1,000cc.

Spotted in places as diverse as guarding the Berlin Wall in West Germany and on construction sites in Brazil, the Munga and Candango were intended from the outset as hard-working military and general service vehicles.

But as countries like the Netherlands started to press the design into military service — Brazil's instead went for the Willys Jeep — the Munga's design was found to be too compromised for a front-line role.

Solution?