WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
Amazonas 1600 Policial (yes, it’s got a VW engine).
Brazil wasn’t overly bouyant in the 1970s. Its buggered economy lead to an import ban on foreign products in an attempt to boost home-grown industry, which included motorbikes and spare parts. Brazilian police were forced to smoke around on ancient bodgedup Harleys, so a bloke called Daniel Rodriguez decided to make an allBrazilian machine and secure the police contract. He set up Amazonas Motocicletas Especiais (AME) and created the Policial.
Several car firms were bashing out cars locally so Rodriguez popped to the VW plant in Sao Paulo and bought a pushrod 1584cc flat four. Yes, the air-cooled Beetle engine. This was shackled into a basic and ridiculously oversize chassis using as many other car parts as possible, including the brake calipers and solid 10mm-thick discs. With just 56bhp, a dry weight of almost 400kg and awful handling from its wobbly chassis and 16-inch balloon tyres, the design was immediately embraced by the Government as the ocial mount for Brazil’s coppers. The first Policial wheezed out of the factory in 1977. Business didn’t boom. Not because the Policial was terrible (though it undoubtedly was), but because it was too reliable. Bikes regularly passed 250,000 miles and the basic nature meant breakdowns could be resolved at the roadside using wire and ignorance, so there wasn’t much return business. So Amazonas decided to sell to the public, with the pannier-shod Turismo and flame-painted Esporte. They exported to the USA in the 1980s (you supplied your own engine as the Brazilian unit didn’t pass emission regs). And in the early ’90s came the Kahena 1600 ‘sportsbike’ with beam frame, single-sider and shaft drive. Oh yes. Relaxed import laws and a local Harley plant killed AME in the ’90s. With rock-hard suspension, the steering response of a cruise ship and a fondness to wander, the gargantuan AME’S only redeeming feature was the range of its 31-litre tank and so fewer than 1000 were made. Several survive though, thanks to the bike’s simplicity and the attention of batty owners. And good on ’em – surely there’s no better way to live out those post-apocalypse Max Rockatansky fantasies.