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7 AutoData | December 2018 Memory There is a lot of good people leaving forever, said the veteran. Better stop that. We have no more substitutes, said Jack the Sailor [a poetic creation by Nei Duclós]. Disclousure/Renault KNOWLEDGE THAT GOES AWAY We were not those fifty-year-old friends. But together we shared many joyous caravans around the world. We exchanged a lot of knowledge, we had fun together. But José Roberto Nasser was never unanimous, a virtue that he did not pursue. Owner of strong opinion in a gray world of ideas (when they existed) did not get tired of causing problems. Roberto Luiz Bógus, as sales director of Fiat, was one of his almost favorite victims. And his intervention during the Verona launch convention (hybrid with the Ford logo from the Autolatina era) is classic: “For me, Verona is a name of a drag queen!”. KNOWLEDGE THAT GOES AWAY 2 But he was not always barbaric like that. In November 2002 we went to Wolfsburg to meet the brand new Autostadt, accompanied by Boris Feldman and Fernando Calmon under the leadership of the beloved boy Serginho Ayarroio. Received by the public relations director of the factory, we got stunned for good 15 minutes: Zé (Nasser’s nickname) went back to 1945 and for the results of Bretton Woods in rebuilding a devastated Germany to, let’s say, see our presence there at that moment. KNOWLEDGE THAT GOES AWAY 3 It was returning fromWolfsburg’s to Frankfurt that I noticed the beginning of Zé Roberto’s physical decay, with his eyes playing tricks on him and the skeleton not responding as it once did. He overcame difficulties with the obstinacy and the discipline of old Levantines.