Gurgel

Gurgel Motores
Industry	Automotive
Founded	1 September 1969
Founder	João Augusto Amaral Gurgel
Defunct	30 September 1996
Headquarters	Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil
Area served	Latin America
Products	Automobiles, commercial vehicles
Number of employees	1,150 (1989)

Gurgel Motores (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɡuʁˈʒɛw]) was a Brazilian automobile manufacturer, named after its founder João do Amaral Gurgel. The company was founded in 1969 and first specialised in buggies and off-road vehicles. Early models were fiberglass bodies installed on Volkswagen Beetle chassis and machinery, but VW bodies and chassis were later replaced by a unique solution made of Plasteel, which consists of fiberglass and steel joined, a system patented by Gurgel. Gurgel also introduced Brazil's first fully domestically designed and manufactured car, the BR-800.