At this point, you probably thinking: "
What on earth is a VW Santana?"
Well, let me tell you:
China is a land with a population of 1.3 Billion people and the best selling car in China is a Volkswagen. So isn't that something to celebrate with a picture thread?
I think so.
That's why I crawled through the web to find the best pics of the VW's best selling car in China. And I came across a Brazilian website dedicated to this car.
These are the best pics I could find. In fact, these are the best you can find. I tried CSVW website and VWVortex but it was no good.
I know it's not the prettiest Volkswagen ever, I know. And yes, the interior is not up to the German designed Volkswagen standards. But remember, the Santana was designed for emerging countries of the 3rd world and it serves the Chinese market quite well.
VW do Brasil and Shanghai-Volkswagen co developed the Santana 2000 which was sold both in China and Sth America.
The model pictured above is the latest generation called
"Santana 3000" (obviously the previous generation was called
"Santana 2000" - look below)
. The 3000 was introduced last year in the Chinese market.
Santana 3000 was released in 2005, Santana 4000 will be released this year
The roots of both the Santana 2000 and the 3000 date from the VW Passat B3.
Actually its heavilly revised B2 Passat/Santana
Believe it or not, but the Shanghai-Volkswagen (
SVW) still build the old Passat B2 since 1985 to this day under the name of Santana.
Whenever I find out the South Africans still make the original Golf Mk1 and the Brazilians still make the original VW Kombi Van to this day and era. I just can't help thinking, that Volkswagen indeed has the most interesting range of cars around the world. VW does indeed have a very interesting lineup worldwide 
It's nice to see the local Volkswagen executives are always finding a way to keep their own market steady, even if they have to reinvent the same old car on a limited budget and yet manage to keep the sales of the car still up.