Smallest skyscraper driver#
Smallest skyscraper windows#

Usually priced around $25,000, the process can double the price of a vehicle, and the 400 or so pounds of extra weight can cut a car's useful life in half. Steel giant Gerdau SA, for instance, offers the vehicles to all executives at the director level and above.įor car enthusiasts, the extensive alterations made to cars during armoring are a downer. 'There's an aspect of keeping up with the Joneses to it,' she says.īulletproof vehicles are already standard equipment for some big companies in Brazil. Passos's aunt, who runs a business taking Brazilians on Harley-Davidson tours in the U.S., says she thinks armored cars can exaggerate social divisions.

Smallest skyscraper driver#

For $875, a driver in a steel-plated Chevy Omega whisks wedding clients to the hairdresser and then to church.Īrmoring is a question that divides some Brazilian families on philosophical grounds. On weekends, the company offers a 'Bulletproof Bride' special. 'You don't want to be the only one without,' says rental manager Maria Tereza Soubihe, whose customers are often looking to impress clients or friends.

Another 6,000 are added annually.Įven the car-rental company Maxiauto has about 30 armored cars on offer. The country's armored-car fleet now numbers some 86,300 vehicles according to the Brazilian Association of Armoring, a São Paulo-based trade group. 'They want to wear a suit, have a nice watch and buy a nice car, so then it needs to be armored,' says David Silva Ferreira, a salesman employed at a Mercedes showroom. A magazine story headlined 'The Hero Car' told the gripping tale of how the bandits' bullets bounced off the car's windows.Īlthough the market is still small - less than one percent of all cars sold in Brazil get armored - sales are jumping again, but this time on a quickening of Brazil's economy that's expanded the ranks of status seekers. Many descend from their armored vehicles only in guarded garages.īrazil's armoring industry, including some 120 companies that convert vehicles, got its first big break in 1999, when bandits tried to kidnap the children of Jorge Paulo Lemann, the most famous banker in Brazil. And the high-heeled feet of São Paulo's wealthiest women rarely touch the city's pavement. Publicly traded companies here don't report executives' salaries, fearing disclosure could turn them into targets. Passos and her attention-grabbing car, most Brazilians seek safety by trying not to call attention to themselves, or to their wealth. I think it's a very pretty and expressive color.' 'Everything that is mine I personalize in pink. Her bedroom has a pink computer and pink snowboard in it. 'I wouldn't drive it unless it was armored,' says Ms. Over the last three years, the number of armored cars in Brazil has doubled as an explosion of wealth has sent the newly rich in search of ways to live safely in a class-driven society where the murder rate is nearly five times that of the U.S.

Smallest skyscraper windows#

Last year alone, more than 3,000 automobiles were taken apart, and then put back together complete with steel door plates, windows five layers thick, and tires that keep rolling even after taking a bullet. This metropolis of 10 million is the auto-armoring capital of the world, by some estimates. They can look, but they dare not touch: Ms. SÃO PAULO - Everywhere 19-year-old Kareen Passos drives in her pink VW New Beetle, men approach her and onlookers shout 'Barbie!' High Crime, High Tastes Drive Auto Upgrades For One 19-Year-Old, a Bulletproof Pink Beetle On São Paulo's Mean Streets, the Rich Roll in Armored Splendor