Argentina did not simply import the Commodore 64. It built its own, at a factory in the province of San Luis run by Drean, and the magazine for its owners was named after the maker as much as the machine. Drean Commodore was published monthly in Buenos Aires from December 1985. In its pages the computer is never just a Commodore 64. It is la Drean Commodore 64: “the programs that Peek has brought to the Argentine market for the Drean Commodore 64”, as issue two put it, and its listings were headed “Comp.: Drean Commodore 64”.
A magazine and a factory
The first issue, priced at ₳2 (two australes), was published by Editorial PROEDI from Cerrito 1320, Buenos Aires, with Ernesto del Castillo as director general and Cristian Pusso as editorial director. Its news page explained where the machines came from. The C-16 and C-64 were “ya se están fabricando en la planta de Drean de San Luis”, already being made at Drean’s San Luis plant, and the company planned to build between 100,000 and 120,000 in 1986. They were sold in specialist shops and in household-goods chains such as Frávega, Ozores and Hogar Obrero. Pedro Nemesio, sales manager of Drean’s computer division, wanted the brand to lead the home computer market: “Pensamos que con una marca como Commodore y el respaldo y prestigio de Drean se pueden unir los esfuerzos y llegar a ser lideres en el mercado de las Home Computer”. Shops advertised both models on twenty interest-free instalments, ₳13.72 a month for the C-16 and ₳21.84 for the C-64. By August 1986 the magazine described Drean as “licenciataria en Argentina de Commodore”, Commodore’s licensee in Argentina.
Issue one led with the Commodore 16, “una computadora doméstica muy avanzada”, set against the Spectrum in a comparison table: 121 colours to the Spectrum’s 16, a typewriter-style keyboard against a rubber one. Its game reviews were Cabecera de Playa (Beach Head), Blue Max, Donkey Kong and Archon, and it promised to cover “los programas que se encuentran en el mercado argentino”, the programs actually on sale in Argentina. Over the next two years the C-64 took over most of the listings, and the C-128 and the Amiga 500 arrived in its pages too.
Inside San Luis
In February 1987 the magazine toured the factory under the headline “Drean San Luis: haciendo Commodore para Latinoamérica”. It described an assembly line of more than fifty work stations, a power supply left running for hours with and without load, and integrated circuits heated with a hair dryer to check that they would survive long use. Drean told the magazine that about 80 per cent of each machine’s materials were Argentine, the imported 20 per cent being the chips; that the tooling and the keys were made in Argentina; and that only 2 per cent of production had even a minor fault. Its engineers, the company said, had replaced the cardboard shield over the components with a metal one, a change the Americans then adopted. That last claim is Drean’s, reported by its own users’ magazine.
The December 1986 issue covered the launch of the Drean Commodore 64C on the 22nd floor of the Hotel Libertador, where the new machine emerged from an exploding balloon in front of more than a hundred guests. Drean also showed prototypes of the 128 and the Amiga. The magazine named the company’s new president, the engineer Sidney Capo, after more than thirty years at Drean S.A., and its commercial director, Ernesto Bessone, a 28-year-old racing driver and Argentine champion who was responsible for selling 100,000 personal computers in 1987. In June 1987 Drean opened a user centre in Mendoza, for the Cuyo region, with twenty machines running and courses in which more than fifty Drean-Commodore owners enrolled on the first day.
Australes
The cover price tells its own story about Argentina in those years. Issue one cost ₳2 in December 1985. By August 1986 the price was ₳2.30, by September 1986 ₳2.70, and by December 1987 ₳6. By then the masthead called the magazine a “revista para usuarios de Drean Commodore” and gave PROEDI’s address as Paraná 720, Buenos Aires.
The latest issue found in public sources is number 27, dated March 1988. Those sources do not record when the magazine stopped, or the terms of Drean’s licence and how long it went on building Commodores. A 2017 article in La Nación, citing the historian Guido de Caso, put Drean’s output at about 10,000 Commodores a month by mid-1986.
Neighbours
The Drean route was one of several in South America. In Brazil, where importing a computer needed government approval, buyers got Brazilian-built copies of foreign machines instead. In Argentina another firm, Czerweny, built Sinclair-derived machines, and dealers who advertised in Drean Commodore also sold software for the Talent MSX and the Sinclair Spectrum.
Sources
- Drean Commodore no. 1, December 1985: cover, contents and masthead (publisher, staff, price); news (“120.000 C16 y C64”: the San Luis plant, production plans, the shops, Pedro Nemesio); the C-16 feature and comparison with the Spectrum; dealer advertisements (instalment prices).
- Drean Commodore no. 2, 1986: contents (“la Drean Commodore 64”) and masthead.
- Drean Commodore no. 9, August 1986: news (“Drean, licenciataria en Argentina de Commodore”) and cover price.
- Drean Commodore no. 13, December 1986, pp. 5–6: the launch of the Drean Commodore 64C, Drean’s executives and sales target.
- Drean Commodore no. 14, February 1987, pp. 7–8: “Drean San Luis: haciendo Commodore para Latinoamérica”, the factory visit.
- Drean Commodore no. 10, September 1986: cover price.
- Drean Commodore no. 20, August 1987: the Cuyo user centre in Mendoza; the Amiga 500.
- Drean Commodore no. 24, December 1987: masthead (“revista para usuarios de Drean Commodore”, PROEDI at Paraná 720) and cover price; no. 27, March 1988: listings (“Comp.: Drean Commodore 64”).
- Drean Commodore nos. 10–16, 1986–87: dealer advertisements for Talent MSX and Sinclair Spectrum software; no. 25, January 1988: advertisement for a Czerweny service agent.
- Augusto Finocchiaro Preci, “La Commodore 64 cumplió 35 años”, La Nación, 4 September 2017 (web, secondary): Drean’s licence to assemble the machines, about 10,000 a month by mid-1986 (citing Guido de Caso). https://www.lanacion.com.ar/tecnologia/la-commodore-64-cumplio-35-anos-nid2058847