Asselbling plant in Vendas Novas, © www.e12.de

At the beginning of the 1970's there were laws in Portugal, that about 30 percent of all parts of a in Portugal distributed cars should be locally produced. This contained for example tyres, batteries and glas parts. Portugal assembled the manual version of BMW 520 since 1973. BMW planned to expand the product range of BMW 5 Series: BMW 520 Automatic and BMW 525. Caused by political changes after April 25th 1974 (Carnation Revolution), the general conditions were changed suddenly. Between 1973 and 1974 the company VN - Montagem e Reparação de Automóveis Batista Russo, Lda. in Vendas Novas assembled 696 Completely Knocked Down sets only. Vendas Novas is located approximately 80 km to the west of Lisbon. Batista Russo also assembled until 1977 also the BMW 02 range: BMW BMW 1600/1602, BMW 2002, BMW 2002A und BMW BMW 1502.


Portugal, © www.e12.de

Here are a few pictures from the trip as a small documentation: Behind the scenes.