Actually, shipping from South America to the US is very expensive, it would be $100 - 150 to send that radio from Brazil to New Jersey or New York. Why? The options are very limited, nobody trusts the public postal system for valuables becuase a significant portion get stolen en route, DHL and Fedex only offer air shipping, which is very expensive. I've never been able to ship packages via cargo ships, the only time cargo ships are a viable choice is when you are going to fill up an entire shipping container. So your friends request, while odd, makes sense if he has concluded the radio won't work in cars in Brazil.

On the other hand, I also find the request dubious becuase I'm pretty sure the radio would work in most cars, I don't think voltage changes in cars between the North America, South America, and Europe. The radio frequencies certainly don't :/ The lack of receipt and original packaging would be another issue for me. I regularly mule stuff for friends here in Argentina, but its always stuff that I've purchased for them in the US, not mysterious packages or devices.