  Cosmological solutions for a pressureless fluid in the Brans-Dicke theory
exhibit asymptotical accelerated phase for some range of values of the
parameter $\omega$, interpolating a matter dominated phase and an inflationary
phase. The effective gravitational coupling is negative. We test this model
against the supernovae type Ia data. The fitting of the observational data is
slightly better than that obtained from the $\Lambda CDM$ model. We make some
speculations on how to reconcile the negative gravitational coupling in large
scale with the local tests. Some considerations on the structure formation
problem in this context are also made.
