The funniest thing about them is that the Lada name was not used in the Union or in post-Soviet Russia until very recently, and even now it is usually applied only to current (Renault-era) models. Some 25 years ago it was also used for imported Finnish production by Valmet, but these are gone and forgotten by now.
4:49 Победа is not "freedom". We outright object and detest this decadent capitalist demagoguery. Победа is "victory". March on, fellow soldiers, the English channel is just a Fulda gap away.
@davidyoung8521 hey now... Kias were pretty solid until Hyundai bought them out. Most of their hardware was licensed Mazda stuff, solid and reliable if less than inspiring. To this day the best source for Mazda FE dohc motors is a Kia Sportage.
And we had western brands that where made in Yugoslavia. For example Volkswagen TAS in Sarajevo Bosnia, Opel IDA in Serbia, Citroen and Renault in Slovenia etc.
@@SuperBosna98 Opel was never made in Kikinda, they only put sticker IDA on already completely finished cars. IDA was casting parts for GM and they were payed in Opel cars.
I have a joke on Trabant. So, I ordered it and paid double the starting price, I managed to enter the waiting list, and now I've been waiting for it for around five years. Oh, sorry, it's not Trabant, it's Cybertruck.
Back when I was in Russia, I used to enjoy going for evening walks in Moscow, just to watch what came down the street.There was a remarkable amount of diversity in vehicles. Lots of old Soviet era cars still on the road in 2008. But everything from tractors to Lambos. Lots and lots of exoctic Italian, German, and British vehicles. I remember one Sunday morning as I was waiting for my driver to take me to Sheremetyevo and I saw a pink '50s Cadillac convertible cruise down the Garden Ring. It was a great place to be a car enthusiast.
@@MiloG209It's true but mostly because of how fucked the demographics of Moscow are, most of the country gets practically nothing from paying taxes, everything goes to the big cities, especially Moscow. The reason is the oligarchs and government officials live there, and thus anyone that wants a future goes to live there as well.
Go live there and see the public transport in even the smallest cities. Meanwhile in America, we don't have anything minus NEW YORK CITY @@My_Old_YT_Account
@@tulku_Onitinke I think that's more indicative of Western education and media being filled to the brim with propaganda. If you were to peer outside the bubble you'd find that reality is very different to what you were told to think.
You got Moskvitch and Lada completely mixed up in the hierarchy. Moskvitch was never positioned above the Lada. It was on the same level at best and only if you compared it to the Lada 2101, the base model. These 2 cars were equal on paper but in practice Lada was still held in higher regard because of its superior reliability and build quality. Moskvitch 412 had a larger engine than Lada 2101 but that was its only advantage in this comparison. Everything else about it was inferior. Lada also had 2 higher trim levels- 2103 (later replaced by 2105) and 2106 (later replaced by 2107), both of which stood way above any Moskvitch and were perceived as luxury cars. In its time the 2106 was basically the most prestigious car available to citizens with no political affiliations
The hierarchy of the Moskvitch and Lada changed often. The early 412s were considered more luxurious than Ladas, later versions however in the early 80s 412s and 2140s were considered less luxurious than the Lada, but after the debute of the 2141 AZLK (Moskvitch) was again considered a more luxurious brand in the late 80s
I remember in the end of the 80’s, when there was still a lot of Ladas in Finland, there was a Russian and Estonian boom to come to Finland and buy up old, used Ladas. There was a severe shortage of spare parts there. In about one year, every Lada disappeared from Finland never to be seen again. They even came to our front door and asked my sister, who had a Lada, if she would sell it? She hesitated, because it worked just fine and she needed it for her job. They offered triple the sum it was worth and she sold it on the spot. The day after she bought a used BMW 3-series. That was a fun memory.
@@mememetal6631"Woops it didn't collapse, now we have bajilion of dollars of debt. Time to hit and watch from afterlife race war among balkans begin"
Fun fact about Moskvitch: The very first post-war Moskvitch was just a pre-war Opel Kadett, because the Soviets took with them the Kadett production tools.
They did the same in the GDR. The Production was in Eisenach a City in the east. The soviets and GDR took the parts and build the BMW 340. The Problem is, they called it EMW Not BMW. After that, there was a huge discussion who is right.
@@bemolp7498 Not quite right. They first called it BMW, but after a court ruling in 1951, they weren't allowed to and switched to EMW (Eisenacher Motorenwerke) and later on to AWE (Automobilwerke Eisenach). They continued to build the pre-war 321 and 327. The 340 was an updated version of the 326. The 342 - based on the 332, which became the 501/502 "baroque angel" in the West - didn't go into production. Then AWE had to produce the F9, a DKW model.
Как раз сейчас я читаю книгу Александра Андронова "Думы о труде". Просто интересно, как онлайн - переводчик переведёт это всё. Но это не моя проблема. Первое. КИМ-10-52. Второе. Вскрытие сидений в Кадетт К-38 показало, что в рант по краям сидений вставлена "калиброванная лиана с острова Ява". Услужливые голландцы поставляли Гитлеру из своих колоний. И как прикажете копировать яванскую лиану? В СССР? В 1947?
The fear of specific cars was not unique to the Soviet Union. My wife was from Argentina. And there the preferred vehicle during the "Dirty War" were black Ford Falcons (which were actually built in Argentina). And whenever she would see one like that on the road in the US she would get a little panic attack because of the memories that would bring back.
Eh... I'd love to see a good overview of soviet automotive industry - with all the pros and cons, and boy, do we have cons on them soviet cars... But sadly, that's not that video. I like your content, but this one had too many small, but glaring errors (like Pobeda, Moskvich placement in that hierarchy, total avoidance of Niva and so on...) and just too many jokes that kinda sound condescending. The errors show a shallow approach to research. It may be a fun video, but the rabbit hole of soviet automobiles is just so much deeper.
@@deeznoots6241 Most of the people shitting on Ladas dont even know how sturdy they were, like any of our western cars could handle remote russia as well as a Lada Niva
black volgas were also a transport for usual officials. So a black was the best color you COULD get for a volga back then, there's also an anecdote about that
@@bldontmatter5319 Black volga wasn't a symbol of fear here, somewhere in poland or in mind of westerners, yes. But here it was a symbol of high status and post. People respect that car. I'm currently repainting mine in black with mint roof
@@bldontmatter5319 Black meant only status, nothing more. The KGB was busy with more important things than looking for some petty person who said that he did not like the USSR or did not like Khrushchev or Stalin. The REAL fear of black cars appeared only in the 90s, during times of instability, poverty and the heyday of banditry, when all sorts of organized crime groups drove them, so that it would be difficult to track them at night.
You sound truly western for my russian ears. Just because there was a cold war doesn't mean that we hated EVERYTHING american or western. So in Russia it's a common knowledge of love of our leaders to american cars. From Stalin to Brezhnev they all were fascinated with cadillacs and fords. So if you stop paint everything with white and black, things will become more understandable.
Yeah man your right on there... It really wasn't MAD (mutual assured destruction) but MAC (m.a.control) U$ and Russia were simply different franchises and needed each other to wield their powers and fears over the people !!! 👍
@@AJayZy In fact the end of the cold war, Was due to , the success Of the west. And products , capitalism, had won. At that point. Now, 2024 , it may be the east , that. Well its being made to appear, to be a better system. A winning system.
The cars of today are too expensive to buy new or used, and are wildly over-complicated and burdensome (both in terms of time and money) to repair. Ignoring all other historical and political context: the world needs another Lada. A simple, cheap shitbox, that no matter how many times it falls apart, can easily be pieced back together for the average lower class person.
It exists, Lada Granta would be considered one of the cheapest cars in the world if not for covid, sanctions and skyrocketed price,lol. It is mostly 80's and 90's tech inside. But otherwise as unremarkable as it could be
@@beibotanovI'm not deceived. It's literally tooled from a knock down kit from Chevy. It's LITERALLY A CHEVY COBALT. It has THE EXACT KNOCK DOWN KIT from 2010 for a CHEVY COBALT, same as the CHEVY NIVA, WHICH IS A KNOCK DOWN KIT FROM CHEVY.
@@bldontmatter5319 who told you this nonsense? Please point a finger at him. It is a domestic design, development of the so called AVVA project - a new 90's styled body with old 80's insides. It is much smaller, cheaper and worse overall than even a Cobalt. I have never seen a Cobalt for sale here, but used Dodge Neon, when they were available and relatively fresh, was considered a much better car, sold for almost twice as much and were popular as US used exports go. Chevy Niva is a domestic design too - also a new 90's body with old 80's insides. Joint venture "GM-Avtovaz" was formed because VAZ was starved for money and could not afford model 2123 mass production. Most of Daewoo's early 2000' line was sold under Chevy brand here too
19:19 Soviets and Soviet Russians never hated the US as a nation. The hate was in official propaganda and targeted only the ruling class of capitalists and their govermnet cronies. Since the end of ww ii soviet ppl were in western music, fasion and movie culture and much influenced by it. That included car designes as you demonstrated. They even enjoyed Pepsi cola before Perestroika.
My father's parents wanted a car and had the money for it in the early '70s, here in Hungary My grandpa had a small shop, making wooden barrels and such things, as an independent "company", the biggest enemy of the socialist state. They waited 4 years for a Wartburg, but did not advance on the waiting list, so they took their money out and bought an army surplus GAZ-69, that was nearly 20 years old at the time.
@richard169 - I was looking for exactly this comment before posting it myself. It had me spit out my coffee from laughting, nearly destroying my keyboard.
Common joke about Trabant (even though it's east german, i think it's apropriate) How do you double a Trabant's value? Fill up its tank There was also a joke about taking it inside the house during rain because they were made from effectively cardboard.
Or the classic British one, what do you call a soft top lada? a skip, then there's the classic, lada are fitted with heated rear windows so you can have warm hand while pushing it.
4:48 Pobeda doesn't mean "freedom". Pobeda means "victory" 7:08 Oh my. By 1958 the repressions were very much over. The infamous black "Voronok" has nothing to do with Volga, it was GAZ M-1 and it was before the war. 7:25 no such story ever existed, don't be ridiculous, and there was no Russian mafia in the Soviet Union at the time. The term only appeared after the Afghan war. 10:30 there were no "dedicated" lanes or "ZIL lanes" as you called them. That's nonsense. The streets were closed off from time to time though, to let the higher ups pass. But that's no different from the practice in the US or Europe. And no it didn't result in "complete traffic jams" as the number of cars in Moscow was still low at the time. 13:10 Fun fact. 2101 was not known as the lada in USSR, that was the export name at the time. Inside the USSR it was known as kopeyka or 1/100 of a ruble, for its round headlights. 19:15 It's pronounced Volga Saiber, not Siber. Good overview overall, though.
You skipped some segments and particular models. First - is cars from SeAZ - very basic cars for disabled people, that giving for free 5-years rent. It was a very simple car, even didn't classified as car but as «мотоколяска» - something between cyclecar and motorized wheelchair, but it was a car. You skipped the 1977 Niva - a Lada model, that was a compact crossover of the time before crossovers become mainstream, with four wheel drive. You also put Moskvich above the Lada, but you are wrong. When VAZ was started, Moskvich became a cheaper car for rural people. It had a leaf springs suspension, only drum brakes (Lada has disk brakes in front) and poorer options. It was many quality issues. And the last part of your video is slightly outdated. After a year, ABS, airbags etc. came back into Russian cars, something from China, something developed (or, maybe, reverse-engineered) locally.
@@boyarin2269 Full drum 2140 was in production till 1987. Also Moskvich-412 was still in production until 1998, it was almost the same model that is in 1967.
@@bioLarzen it went by a lot of different names like the Cossack or in Australia we had the bushman and niva toro but they all came with niva badges, the Riva is an entirely different car
At 3:36, that is so wrong at many levels... East Germany was NOT part of USSR, but member of the warsaw pact. Also the brand was NOT "Trabant", the car maker was called SACHSENRING and the car was named Trabant. Please when you make videos for infotainment, do your research right! You will NOT call Chrysler "Voyager", because they built a car calles Voyager?? Also what is with the WARTBURG car maker on the chart? You forgot it?
Warsaw pact enhanced, the name soviet union. Stop changing history like everyone else does to live in denial. There is a reason why East Germany got that name..
I made jokes about the LADA, then I bought one. As a joke. Let me tell you, there will be a day, a post apocalyptic day, when the last BMW has stolled, and there will still be bloody LADAs built in the 70s roaming the roads. Not comfy, not high tech, but they fucking work and if they dont you can fix them yourself. If you can't, you won't survive in a postapocalyptic world anyway so no loss there. They are great! Just don't expect a Rolls Royce, a Ferrari or a Bimer. The bloody thing start with no problem, when its so cold that I need to wear glows when opening the door. Or rather stop holding the door. When its so cold that the hand and the door will freeze into one, just turn the key and that thing will start right up. It's amazing. I love it. And the heater... its Hot, Sauna, and Hell have nothing on me temperature. I cant keep it on max when its 35 celcius below zero, well in those temperatures I allways drive dressed to leave the car anyway. I might have to pull a poor MB diesel driver out of his hypertech shithouse to safety. There's no way to not love the old LADA.
@@bart6442 I am from Poland and because they were so rare, there is much more information about them. The regular ones and variants aren't so available. I found out so much from the Polonez video.
A Russian friend has a 1978 Lada. I've driven it, it was a delightful ruggedly built little car. Of course he takes good care of it. A couple years ago the engine failed. For $200 it was completely rebuilt. Parts are plentiful, repairs are simple and the whole car technologically is about equal to 1960 in the USA. That is great, you can fix it with a few hand tools, even far from a city or town. The bodies are thick galvanized steel with heavy duty suspension. If they were offered for sale in the USA, I think they would have been very popular. Imagine a reliable, better built 1975 Chevy Vega for 1/3 of the price.
"If they were offered for sale in the USA" -- The current safety regulations would never allow it. And yeah, I like simple cars of that era, but there it is.
@@mountainhobo Which is why I drive classic American iron. Sit down, turn the key, drive off. No touchscreen distractions, cryptic control symbols, seat belts, air bags, computers, navigation systems, environmental systems, etc. Can be had for a fraction of the cost of a new car, easy to work on, parts available, and so on. Gets you from point "A" to point "B" with decent fuel mileage. That's good enough for me.
@@seb_1504 *Current* regulations. It seriously went over your head? I don't live in your imaginary world where it is 1975. Go ahead, and try to make it street legal *now*. Try to understand the post before responding.
Pobeda is "victory". Moskvitch was a lower class than Lada. You didn't mentioned soviet microbuses (they were amazing). You ignored parts where western "partners" like Renault hold hostage the financial assets (i.e. stole money). Lada sold with airbags etc. Too many mistakes. Bad work, must redo.
Dude, it is a 20 minute UA-cam video... not the Rise & all o the Roman Empire. 🤷♂ Also - Soviet micro busses...? (I am sure they were both luxurious & powerful)
Yeah poor research with a condescending tone gives this video an interesting vibe, I'm no eastern bloc car expert but ask anyone from that time and place - the Moskviches were considered much less prestigious than owning a Lada, which was top of the line car for anyone not an official or anyone 'important'. It was also a tiered based system when it came to the waiting lists - usually you could not get a Lada as a first car (very workplace dependent), you would need to own a ZAZ for X amount of years or if you're lucky a Moskvitch first. Then you would get in queue to get your shiny new Lada while driving one of the 'lower' cars. Also offroaders like the later Lada Niva or earlier 4x4 Moskvitch (completely skipped in the video) were prioritized to agriculture workers. The way you bought a car was to apply for a purchase request in your workplace, that's where the quotas and waiting lists came in and all of that easily exploitable corruption as mentioned in the video.
14:25 The basic premise is wrong, the Moskvitch was WAY below the Lada, like in Czechoslovakia it was literally one 1/3 cheaper than the Lada, it had the same price tag as the basic Škoda 100 and would often sell so poorly it was sold next year with a 15% discount. And the GAZ 13 Chaika was basically unpurchasable for personal use. The ZAZ was much closer to the VW than the Fiat 500 as the lowest part of the market that the Fiat 500 represented wasn’t really a thing in the USSR.
@@kwanlinus6999 And it was never sold in the Soviet Union. Heck to continue the Czechoslovak comparison, it was literally only 10% less expensive than the Moskvitch. And actually more epensive if you bought the last year's Moskvitch.
@@kwanlinus6999 In Czechoslovakia Trabant was way cheaper cost about 36 500 Kčs compared to 42 000 Kčs for the Maluch, Moskvitch was 45 000 Kčs for the weaker and 52 000 Kčs for the more powerful model, the kombi version was the most expensive version of the Moskvitch at 58 000 Kčs but also imported in extremely low numbers. Compared to that the Lada 1200 cost 58 000 Kčs and the top of the line Lada 1600 76 500 Kčs. Wartburg cost about 57 000 Kčs for the sedan and 64 000 Kčs for the Tourist but compared to the Moskvitch it basically never stayed around and was way more desirable than the Moskvitch. To throw in a few more cars; Dacia 1300 went for 66 000 Kčs, Ford Cortina 1600 about 85 000 Kčs, Škoda 120 GLS cost 66 000 Kčs and Fiat 125p 1500 cost 65 400 Kčs.
@@eozcompany9856 The outlier here seems to be the Wartburg. No idea why it was so desirable despite being powered by a two-stroke, when the Lada 1200 has a four-stroke and is almost the same price (Maybe because the waiting lists were so much longer?) The Moskvitch and Dacia seems to face the greatest ridicule of the normal sized cars. The former had an Opel Kadett engine dating back to WW2, while the latter had a joke that only the ones built on a Wednesday worked. I guess the Skodas were quite desirable among the sports car community of eastern bloc, if there is one I guess?
That applies to every so-called 'historical' car video on UA-cam. Smart-asses all over spouting off about chit they haven't the vaguest clue. If UA-cam had a less-convoluted way of making money and compensating people, it wouldn't have gained the new reputation of the Worlds Greatest Liar Marketplace.
A New Russian's son complains to his father: "Daddy, all my schoolmates are riding the bus, and I look like a black sheep in this 600 Merc." "No worries, son. I'll buy you a bus, and you'll ride like everyone else!"
I know somewhat different joke. New Russian's son complains to his father. "Daddy, all my schoolmates laugh at me for riding a bus, I want BMW" ... few days later. Sorry son, I was only able to acquire 30%. Other shareholders didn't want to sell.
Despite this article being a bit biased I enjoyed it. Having travelled extensively in the former Soviet Union and later the CIS I can vouch that many of these vehicles are still in everyday use. I remember being in a Lada in Tblisi in Georgia when one of the rear wheels came off, the driver just carried on and dropped us off as planned about 200m up the road
One thing to note however, is that since the inception of the USSR in 1922, to its dissolution in 1991, Russia had been under almost a complete embargo by the rest of the planet. As such, while western countries were allowed to specialise in specific export sectors of their economies and make up the shortfall by importing from other countries, the Soviet Union was forced by these sanctions to be completely self-sufficient, which meant it could not specialise it's economy towards a specific type of production, such as car building, and instead had to be able to produce everything it needed domestically. It is this context that I believe proves that a planned economy would still be far more efficient and beneficial in the modern day, as despite being beset on all sides by hostile powers, weathering the brunt of two world wars, civil war, invasion, blockade, and sabotage, the Soviet Union still managed to go from a backward feudal system under the Tsar, to sending the first man to space in 44 years, and it was the first in the world to grant universal suffrage to women, universal healthcare, housing, childcare, and guaranteed employment, all starting from an economy in 1922 that was equivalent to that of Brazil. We can only Imagine what they would've been capable of without the blockades, or the destruction. We can only imagine what we would be capable of under a similar system, starting from an economy multiple times larger.
You make a strong case. However, if I was to have vigorously disagreed with you back in the day, the problemette was that I would have risked arrest. Planned economies tend to be paired with totalitarian regimes. I would trade apparent freedom for any amount of economic wellbeing. I am well aware that freedom is in short supply everywhere at the moment.
@@jeffbybee5207 probably the only implication that the Italians had in the Soviet industry was the fact that they helped them with the creation of the Lada by giving them license from fiat for the first lada models
@@SpicyTexan64 The USSR was made up of fifteen republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine. the soviet union disappears no longer exists *Russia is not the Soviet Union Yugoslavia no longer exists * Serbia is not Yugoslavia everyone who ruled the communist Soviet Union was not Russian insists on mixing Russians and Soviets?
@@SpicyTexan64 Communists took power after a civil war in which 14 million people died, most of them Russians The Bolshevik Party was predominantly non-Russian the 8 who led the communist Soviet Union were not Russian insist on mixing Russians and Soviets?
Not just quite a few Moskviches and Ladas ended up abroad, but actually most of them ended up there, up to 80% of total production. It's just overall modest production numbers and barebonity of those cars which didn't make them appealing to preserve, that made them a rare sight abroad nowadays. And that was why USSR citizens had to wait years after paying just to get their car (after paying some more due to inflation). The reason for that was the soviet state being in a constant need of foureign currency to maintain international trade due to having a basically unconvertible inner rouble. So that task was achieved by exporting oil, grain, fish, agricultural equipment... and cars.
Yeah, quickly overlooked fact. The fact that the Soviet Union achieved the things with the pressure they were under deserves credit. They didn't have it easy.
@@theothertonydutch Just one more restrictive meat grinding machine under pressure of a bit less restrictive meat grinders)) All in all the difference by the end of 20th century was solely due to stubborn insistance of USSR to stay deaf for it's citizens and not even try to evolve in any meaningful non-recursive way. Modern day Russia is long way back on that recursive self-autofellative political course. Guess, that's what are the true russian circles. Only the finite nature of human existence stops them from winding lower and lower through centuries, heh. Some Asian countrues, however, somehow escape this rule - by a wisdom of giving birth to mentally elderly pricks, I guess)))
The Soviets were doing quite a lot of grain importing back in the 80's and early 90's. It was quite common to see Soviet flagged bulk ships on the Great lakes and getting loaded up in Duluth. It struck me as odd when I was a kid seeing the "enemy" ships getting loaded up.
Leaves a lot to be desired honestly. Could've gone more into the history, and could've read some newer sources for the ending, not 1 year old stuff. ABS and airbags are back, the ESP systems are being tested still as they need 2 climate cycles for testing (winter-summer-winter). Emissions equipment is back in, and it wasn't really ever away, they still had catalysts, just the engine ecus weren't set up to not slow down production.
And he didn't even mention that Vladivostok and pretty much most of the Russian east is packed with JDM imports which are still steadily coming in to this day.
Or that GAZ did experiment with new models. The 3103-3104-3105 family, the 3111 and others. Or that with the struggle after the fall of the union, the auto makers started making some very strange models, like the Lada Nadezhda, the GAZ Ataman and the long Moskviches. There's so much more explore. Instead he went on the beaten path of downplaying the work of the russians and ending on a low note.
@@Random-nf7qb Yeah, the opening praising the free market was a dead giveaway about the level of the rest of the video. Let's not forget that Ed, a dutchman, has also likely grown up on anti-communist propaganda and news-reports about a drunk Jeltsin who finally got replaced by stronk leader Putin. Hell, most of the west was on Putin's dick until the last decade and past three years. It wouldn't surprise me if he thought that Putin was actually a pretty cool guy before all that shit went down, though that's just conjecture from my side and wasn't a particularly unpopular opinion to begin with. Ya know, before all thát. Just a disclaimer: I'm not saying that the Soviet Union wasn't up to some horrible de-humanizing shit, but so was the west. The ideology behind it barely matters. The whole making fun of Russia for basically having to rebuild itself after the collapse of the SU must have had a very traumatic and long lasting impact on inhabitants of Russia.
What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill? A miracle. If you ever think that your life has no purpose, just remember that there is someone somewhere that is fixing the brakes on a Lada.
Interesting fact: Lada still owns the record for the most successful launch of a new brand on the Canadian market. They were not particularly well-made and they required more tinkering than other cars of the era, but at least they were designed to cope with winters very similar to ours. For many years, many could even be seen plying the taxi trade in our cities. They also opened the gates to an influx of other Eastern European cars, such as the Dacia and Skoda, once it became very clear that Canadian car buyers were not opposed to buying cars from communist countries. This lasted for many years, but eventually the Soviet inability to evolve their product caught up to them. Lada did eventually launch the all new FWD Samara, but it still had no options for an automatic transmission or a/c and by then Hyundai had arrived with its basic and inexpensive RWD Pony and fully-equipped Stellar, both of which offered the options the Canadian market clamored for, and it was curtains for Lada, Dacia, and Skoda.
@@jh565bbthe Volga is on par with US build quality of the time. I've happened to own a Volga gaz-24 in Russia, and an UAZ hunter. They're both on par with the 1988 f250 and 1970 f100 I've had
Well, the ranking of soviet cars is not quite right. Ladas were ALWAYS more presigious and pricier than Moskvitches. Also you missed a few cars from 1940-50s. Moskvich 400 series - in essence a pre-war Opel Kadett. Before purely governmental ZiL-111 there was ZiS-110, which was prodused even in much larger numbers, was used not only by party officcials and even Stalin personally, but also as premium taxicab, and as ambulance. And even before that, there was a pre-war ZiS-101. As for the deficite, it have become a thing only in the early 60s. Before that you could buy freely almost any car: Pobeda, Volga, Moskvich or even ZiM-12. As long as you had enough money for that. Which at first was a problem and rare thing, in the country that suffered heavily from massive war destruction.
@obywatelcane6775really goes to show you that things were not as they seemed. The 2106 was idolized, even in the west it was the status of "normal" and usable, given the time period, where power steering and AC weren't even common yet
I have a 1974 Zhiguli 2103 which is what you are calling Lada, a later name. It is indestructible and starts first time, has a high wheelbase and stronger suspension for snow and bad roads (here in Latvia) and does not rust. The steel is thick and I love it. It is hard to steer as it has no power steering, thats all the problem if you mind that.
Dude, in my opinion, you have one of the best, if not the best, automotive channels on UA-cam! I'm a guy who restores and customizes old American Iron. Great job!
Honestly, it's never been easier to get LITERALLY any car to Russia than now. For example, if you want BMW - you can get used one from Korea, Germany (more like from every country from EU), UAE, USA etc., or a new one from the exact same source countries. More than that, now the whole chinese domestic market cyborgs on wheels are avaliable to buy here, in Russia. Lixiang, Zeekr (idk exactly, were they passed on EU market or not), Yangwang (luxury BYD brand), HiPhi and much more other brands, known only inside China. In late 80s, 90s and early 00s we appreciated JDM, now we are one on the first nations to experience CDM. Grey imports in its best.
@@poochie49 It was so much worse, let's say like 10-15 years ago, because the lack of cameras. Of course, you can't fully delete thefts from society, but i think the situation is better here, than anywhere in America. And there's another reason - all new cars (except the cheapest version of Lada Granta) came with immobiliser from like 10 years or even more. So, no "kia boys" here
In the 80s, when I was a student, I swapped an MOT failure for a Lada. The drivers window was held up with a wooden wedge in the door and the rest with bodge tape. The choke had to be pulled out at lights and junctions to stop it stalling and the handbrake lever snapped off on a particularly steep hill. I parked it on a hill so I could bump start it as it would rarely start on the key. It lasted a year before I scrapped it. Fond memories.
Respect to everyone in the comment section that is clearly very knowledgeable about the Russian and Eastern Bloc auto industry. Seriously, that is one jungle that I wouldn't even dare enter, so complicated and convoluted. And respect to Ed for even trying. Sure, there might have been errors but this was better than most. And entertaining as always
@@karlwalther They already write whatever nonsense they want because Westerners have no idea. That's what 100 years of propaganda gets you, nobody questions the media when they've heard the same lies so many times.
I would not say this is better than most, it's so full of errors and shameless bias that if he had any creative integrity he'd take it down and re-do it from scratch.
my family's originally from the USSR, and my paternal grandparents had a GAZ-21 that they bought in 1963. They said that they had to borrow money from every family member in order to buy it, and the reason why they chose it over the Lada or other affordable options is that, due to the high price, there was no multi-year long queue to receive one.
This video is looking at Soviet cars completely back-to-front with the usual Animal Farm smarminess. The development of automobiles was always a secondary consideration, even after the Great Patriotic War. This was partly due to the socialist ideal of developing public transportation first (which the USSR did to great success) and partly due to the sheer devastation that the Great Patriotic War wrought. Developing cars for private use, especially when the material conditions made it so that they were in effect luxury goods instead of the necessities they were in the West, would have been a waste of precious resources when your country had to rebuild from a smoking crater. Hence, the focus on trucks and buses vs. passenger cars just made sense right up until the USSR had finally rebuilt enough to launch its first true people's car in the form of the brilliant AvtoVAZ/Lada 2101.
lada 2101 is a Fiat, even after ALL those years rebuilding they still couldn't make a simple people car... George Orwell was a brilliant visionary and spot on.
@@Blackadder75 Not really. The 2101 started out as a FIAT 124, but so many changes were made to the platform that it could'nt be considered the same car anymore. More than 800 in fact by AvtoVAZ engineers. For starters, the body was 10% thicker to prevent rust issues, and the engine was so much improved that FIAT themselves even used it as a performance upgrade. This engine was a 1,198-cc single-overhead-cam unit that was all new. It also had a lot of room for future expansion, eventually hitting 1.7L. George Orwell was neither spot on nor brilliant about anything. He was a colonial cop for the British Empire in Burma who was later detested by his own comrades in the Spanish Republican side (saying that he should have been fighting for the other side). He flirted with Nazism, as evidenced with this quote from the New English Weekly dated March 21, 1940: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power . . . I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. . . ." Oh yeah, he also sold out his "fellow" socialists to the CIA as a snitch and raped 17-year-old Jacintha Buddicom when he was 15. As for his so-called "greatest work", 1984, its just a mediocre carbon-copy of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We".
@@curiousgeorge5992 as long as the US did them the Favorite Nation thing. As soon as they got jealous and turned the switch off, Japanese economy growth has halted and remains such for the last 35 years. While Russia had kinda 2 years without any sanctions in a century
This video is so coloured by ideology and propaganda that it's just ridiculous. Absolute low point of an otherwise pretty good channel. You could've just had a 5 second short that said "gommulism bad" and left it at that.
I don't follow the channel but I gave this a chance hoping it wasn't going to be the case, unfortunately you're very correct. "Putin's personal project to blah blah blah" - yup, he had every intention to invade Ukraine "unprovoked".
given that the Chinese car industry already terrifies the Western car makers, I wouldn't be so condescending with the future of the Russian industry. other than that, very good video as always.
chinese industry doesn't terrify the west, only the chinese government's financial practices does. and yes , we know asians can make good cars, Japan and South Korea have lead the way
@@Blackadder75 I guess the new tariffs imposed to Chinese products and accusations of 'over capacity' (whatever that is) are just friendly welcoming nudges huh?
@@Blackadder75 That's a ridiculous take, you've gobbled up the narrative where we in the West can help our car manufacturers as much as we want but China can't, not that they're even doing that much.
If you ever want to drive a 24 Volga, hit me up, i invite you to come to Austria :) I have been waiting for this episode for a long time! I myself own the outdated cost-cutting GAZ 2410 Volga from 1989, currently the only one registered in Austria. Even if this was just a rough overlook of the history with some tiny hickups, this is probably my favourite video you have made, since this part of automotive history is not really talked about too much here. About the current revival thing that is going on in russia: Russians and even Government official hate the fact that none of it is made in russia. The new Moskvich was hated, I can only pray for Volga. Edit: the Lada Niva and the UAZ 452 are still being made, with barely any changes.
awesome! Yet Ed's would be probably as mocking as DeMuro's review. UAZ 452 and it's minibus sis are now handmade in a bad sense of the word and certified as tractors, BTW
I wish that the many channels about technical history would refrain from including political history since most of them get it wrong. The summary of capitalism vs communism (well, socialism actually) in this video is a typical example.
Politics overload gets off-putting after a while. Moscow has far better subway stations than New York - and less homeless people on the streets. And Russia is not bankrupt.
ZiL is pretty interesting ZiL began as AMO, but was changed to ZiS after Stalin took over and decided to name the factory after himself, the ''S'' standing for ''Stalina''. This changed after Stalin dies and De Stalinization was carried out, causing the factory's name to be changed to ZiL. ZiS made the ZiS 5 which served a huge role in the Red Army in WW2. In 1947 they made the ZiS 150, which went on to become one of the most recognizable Soviet trucks and was licensed to allied countries, like China and Romania. ZiS also made the ZiS 112, a race car with an interesting ''cyclops'' design similar to the GM LeSabre. When they changed to ZiL they made the ZiL 130 and 131, some of the most iconic Russian trucks ever made. The 131 is easily recognized for it's light blue color and white grill. The 131 was also made all the way up until 2012, when ZiL ceased to exist. There's many others that could be talked about, like KamAZ and MAZ, and even the Yugoslav FAP, communist trucks have always been fascinating to me
Saab 💪 I’m in USA and fell in love and sourced some Hirsch Troll Saab parts to try to build the dream saab we never got in the states! Also have a friction tester saab 9-5 let’s not forget saab started in aircraft then 2 strokes then the turbos and ice racing rally history they have! I call saab the smallest super car company as they just went all out, created great, safe cars and had so many custom or special options. Sad they are gone but not forgotten. Plan on attend Saab Owners Convention 2024 in Portland Oregon USA
The Soviet Union's best shape was from the mid 50's to the early 60's. That's when their economy peaked, and they created a lot of things. 6:40 I think it was actually a bit of a mix between the 1949 Ford "Shoebox" and the 1954 Ford Custom. 19:10 After 14 years, a new model of the Volga will be made this summer called the C40. Sadly, it's just a Chinese rebranding of "Changan."
correction: the Soviet Union was not made up of Russia and satellite states, Russia and 15 other republics and autonomous regions made up the Soviet Union, Hungary, East Germany, or the other Warsaw Pact nations were not a part of the USSR nor necessarily puppets of the USSR. also i don't know if you made the map, but in 3:25; Yugoslavia was not aligned with the USSR or the Warsaw Pact and neither was Greece, which never went communist but only had a civil war.
1 what o you mean by "eventually forming the Soviet Union"? It was formed decades prior to the Cold war. 2 the two entities you've placed in your infographics "Russia plus the republics" and "the US plus Western countries" are not by any means equal. you probably mean the US+the West and the USSR+the Eastern block (Poland, Hungary, etc.)
Kinda chilly for the ACT; it's about 31C here in N. Ohio today...Ironically, I first heard of Lada when I lived there (1974-76); a long-defunct U.S. car magazine, "Imported Car Performance", had an article titled "Better Lada Than Never", and our school (Lyneham High) had a copy of "World Cars: 1974") in the library, which I devoured during class breaks!
Buses are better than having car's for every person, that's one thing the USSR won with, we in Eastern Europe enjoy such things as sidewalks, and public transport. (You may say something about the quality of the sidewalks, but that's just due to our current government's not giving a f-)
I would be very happy to use public transportation. It's not available where I live and when I travel I must go a long way to be anywhere. This is true for many people in America and I would think it's the same in the former Soviet Union because of its tremendous size. European countries are rather small in comparison so I believe I would use public transportation and perhaps a bike as well.
i remember my mother cried when the old moskvitch was taken to the junkyard after it served the family for like 20years, my dad was a mechanic so he could repair our cars, skoda, lada, moskvitch, they were simple, cheap to maintain and good enough for getting from point A to B
I hope the next episode about communist cars is about the entire non-USSR bloc. I was so annoyed that the Donut Media vid about communist cars only talked about the USSR and East Germany as if they were the only eastern bloc countries.
Another fun fact about Ladas: for some foreign markets, it was shipped with air conditioner or automatic transmission, but these options were never available for the domestic market.
Also he does not talk about production number.. only hundred of thousands per year while USA made millions per year. Often there was a 10+ year wait… unless your traded a winning lottery ticket for a car now.
A bit cheap to bash on soviet cars, it is not really original, also did you ever ride in 50's european car? Not much better.. I know cars in the Soviet Union had many problems, but you make it out to be a total disaster, how many European cars last 40 years?
From Ronald Reagan: Man: *pays for a new car* Dealership guy: Ok, come back in ten years and get your car Man: Morning or afternoon? Dealership guy: It’s 10 years from now, what does it matter? Man: Well the plumber’s coming in the morning
Daddy McKarthy would be proud. You really cant make a video about Russia nowadays without an insult, lame joke, or weird heresay like ZIL lines in Moscow. Oh well, dunno why youtube even showed it to me in the recommendations. "Classic car connaisseur" my ass, i expected Chaika garage tour, but instead i've got "Let me explain about your country" moment.
It seemed to me, that farm tractors were in larger demand than cars, for a long time. We used to see people on tractors, sometime pulling carts or wagons behind them. It would make sense, when you consider the huge portions of land that was country, farmland, or isolated villages, far from the modernism of the bigger cities. I don't blame the Russians for imitating the American cars. I wish American cars could go back to those days when style was something more than plastic bumpers and plastic everything else! You used to be able to look under the hood and see an engine... Now, "just more plastic." So much so, the engine is usually completely hidden.
Nice job on the video. In Car and Driver magazine in the 70's there was an article about the Moskvich factory which said it was the last fully self-contained factory in the world. Raw materials went in and cars came out. Even the tires were made there. I always wanted to hear more about that factory but have never been able to find anything here in North America.
which is VERY inefficient, thats why Japanese and Western factories moved to a system of sub contractors, where every business specializes in certain parts.making the whole much cheaper, faster and higher quality
@@Klovaneer because the guy that invented a better disk brake lives 500 km away and build his factory there and not on the same plot. And the guy that makes the best car batteries lives 700 km the other way..... get the idea? Maybe economic forces bring these people together if that saves money, but maybe not, the market will decide what is best and not central planning which has always been wasteful and bad for invention, as communist history shows
@@Klovaneer The throw-away-economy is a recent phenomenon, most of the history of western capitalism quality won and people would re-use items as long as possible. I never heard about Superfest, so I looked it up, oh its drinking glassware I read the coca cola comment about not breakable being a bad thing, but that is commercial talk about cheap cafe glasses that get tossed around and break often. . Normal people don't use coca cola branded glassware, but just plain ones and they can last a lifetime. I got most of my nice looking glasses from my grandparents who bought them in the 1960s-1980s and they still are all perfectly useable and shining , as are the ones I bought myself as a student in the 2000s. Sure sometimes one breaks if a person is careless, but that's ok. That is just a normal aspect of life.
I have heard several say it was, a few have appeared on UA-cam, but maybe after market upgrades. I have never seen even an image of the engine bay of the much rumored Wankel Engine version (probably because they may have only made a few hundred, but thousands of engines, as it probably went through them like the NSU Ro80).
@@jon-paulfilkins7820 Sure, some of them are in fact aftermarket installations, made after the fall of SU, when these 5.5L engines have become available from the decommissioned Chaikas, but what is more significant - from military equipment, for example BRDM-2 armored vehicle, which also had these engines. But true KGB Volgas were made by GAZ itself. Model GAZ 24-24. And all of these factory made Volgas had mandatory automatic transmission. In fact, previous GAZ models also had modifications for KGB, GAZ M-21 also had V8 equipped variants, even earlier GAZ M-20 for KGB had inline flathead 6, when basic cars still had inline 4s.
Hey there friend! Great to see you cover up this bit of history. I'm from Ukraine. And everything that you said is 100% correct. The history of automobile industry in the Soviet Union was a simple knock off. Everything that was possible to steal or to implement without permission.-was done. For example, my country produced as you have mentioned, the Zaz. Originally the vehicle was meant to be serving the lowest levels of soviet society and the disabled citizens. Believe me, it was a miracle to have one in your family. I am the owner of 968M which has proudly been serving my family for 29 years. Yes, the Zaporozets is a severely faulty and unreliable vehicle. Especially considering its age at this point. Yet this exact vehicle has been deep down in the heart of Ukrainians nation. So much so that we have made up tons of anecdotes about it. One of them goes like this; they say that it's better to experience one hour of shame in Zaporozets then commuting on a public transport. So everybody was well aware of the faults and absolute rubbishness of production of this vehicle but at the same time, it was freedom to move wherever you needed and haul things. A close friend of my father once traveled from Ukraine to Moscow with full load of 3 tons on ZAZ 968. (with a trailer atached). That took place in the 90s. People were trying to earn money in any way possible. The Soviet reality dictated that one should firstly get in a line for a garage permission. Thus having garage, you are only then allowed to enter the line for a vehicle. So having a vehicle was pretty much a social elevator at those times. Even more so having a garage was a very important social instrument. It was the place where men could spend their leisure fixing up and perfecting their vehicles, which were absolutely rubbish from the factory. And also having a good drink in circle of close friends. Currently Ukraine unfortunetely is not prodicing any cars. There were recent attempts to revive the LUAZ pick up trucks. Turned out a knock off chineese rebadged model. The same way every modern Russian car is essentially a knock off as well. The so-called modern VAZ (LADA) models are produced under the license of Renault. Essentially being a licensed re-badged French vehicles. The quality is even worse than Renault. The same deal goes on with their military potential where they showcase "absolute innovations", well at least in their minds. In reality, the vehicles would never be let on to a battlefield in a Western block countries. No safety regulations no quality of handcraft and production. Unfortunately, we Ukraunians were left with the Soviet legacy after the fall of USSR. The Soviet machinery, which we are forced to use now to protect ourselves from the invader - Russian army. Yes, there is a development of modern military vehicles, heavy duty machinery and other military units crucial for our war. Unfortunately the government of Ukraine is too corrupt to license production and mass distribution of the needed armed vehicles and heavy machinery to the frontiers of the invasion line. Moreover, some additional information on the topic that you have touched upon in your video; foreign car companies left Russian market only officially. Whereas unofficially they still offer brand new zero mileage vehicles, all around Russia. Even more so, there are offers of luxury and sports vehicles widely spread around main cities as Moscow and Saint Pitersburg. This essentially means that our allies have betrayed us and sanctions are only on paper, and there are no real counter measures taken against the threat of Russia. Finally, I'd like to thank you again for covering this crucial topic as part of automotive history. No matter how controversial the Soviet cards are - they are still part of the world, and they affected the minds of people who lived under this forced union.
I would correct you a bit. Moskviches were cheaper and much more available than the Ladas, therefore I consider the Moskvich as an Opel or a Ford and Lada more like BMW. VAZ 2103/2104 with 1500cc engines were pretty quick in their time, compared to ZAZ or Moskvich.
что смазать важнее, шкворни или червяка? и можно ли вставить в кузов 24 или 2410 детали от более похожих на автомобиль поздних - двигатель Крайслер, гидроусилитель, дисковые тормоза?
I want one of those black Volgas. I'll take the Chika in black sedan, too. Russians can't get western cars. Garage 54: "Watch us tow our latast experiment out of pile of snow with our H2 Hummer."
Волги на ЗМЗ, а именно так называется двигатель, будут довольно медленными, даже для того времени. Детали для таких белых ворон ты хрен где найдёшь за пределами России. Лучше купить старенькую s80, чем Волгу, хотя бы целее будешь
In the USSR, the Lada was originally called Zhiguli (this is the name of the low mountains in the places where the plant was built). However, when these cars began to be exported, they had to change the name to Lada (an ancient Slavic female name), because Zhiguli is very similar to Zhigalo.
This video and the comments have taught me so much. I’m mostly familiar with the Lada brand from all of those Russian dashcam videos. Those cars seem to be the Nissan Altima of Russia. Big Lada Energy I’d love to see more about that Aurus brand… I was getting the same vibes as you (a Chrysler 300 with a Rolls-Royce grille). Keep up the great work, good Sir 😌🙌❤️
An old Lada will outlive you and probably your grandkids. 😂 And I’d love one of those big old Zis or a Zil limousines! Might need some modification of course.
Ed, you forgot the most laughed at car in America from the old Soviet Union satellite country of Yugoslavia that was imported by the United States, and that car was the infamous Yugo! This car was the epitome of old Soviet styling and luxury and quality (not). It was the but of jokes, particularly here in Michigan. With a $3000 price tag, which was cheap even by 1980s economic standards, you could be the proud owner of a Yugo. But this is no laughing matter. The Yugo's weight was so light that one them was crossing the Mackinaw Bridge when a gust of wind blew the car over the side, with it's driver and plunged 250 feet into the Straits of Mackinaw (true story). The Yugo had such a low safety rating that it almost didn't meet the American minimum safety standards for imported vehicles, and ever single automotive review of the Yugo advised buyers to steer clear of the Yugo.
How many jokes can you tell about Lada's?
To triple one's value, you fill it up half-way.
In Jamaica they called them Life After Death Association, because of the chance of surviving an accident
The funniest thing about them is that the Lada name was not used in the Union or in post-Soviet Russia until very recently, and even now it is usually applied only to current (Renault-era) models. Some 25 years ago it was also used for imported Finnish production by Valmet, but these are gone and forgotten by now.
4:49 Победа is not "freedom". We outright object and detest this decadent capitalist demagoguery. Победа is "victory". March on, fellow soldiers, the English channel is just a Fulda gap away.
It vos invented in Russia.
"I want to return my Lada. Uphill it only goes up to 75"
" 75 uphill sounds pretty good to me"
"Yes but i live at house number 80"
That's a good one.
Ha good one.
😂
That's a western joke as you do not get soviet housing numeration
😅🤣😂
A guy comes to a junkyard and asks : "A hubcap for a Lada ?" Junkyard man: "Yeah. That sounds like a fair deal"
A re-badged Kia joke. See the irony? Both are a P.O.S. car.
Oldie but a goodie.
@davidyoung8521 hey now... Kias were pretty solid until Hyundai bought them out. Most of their hardware was licensed Mazda stuff, solid and reliable if less than inspiring. To this day the best source for Mazda FE dohc motors is a Kia Sportage.
@@DrewLSsixkilled in action against hyundai
Ladas today are better quality than American or Australian cars, I know as I have one and its parked in a paddock at 25 below zero.
Победа (Pobieda) is not “freedom” as claimed in the video but it is “victory”.
Was gonna say it then I saw your comment.... I'm not even Russian but I know it lol
its all meh
yup..was just gonna comment this!
I thought it meant decades of economic missmanagement and state opression
Still a word that doesn't seem to have any particular meaning in the russian language.
BTW, Yugoslavia was never a satelite state. It was a socialist counttry, this is true, but it was never a part of Eastern block.
And we had western brands that where made in Yugoslavia. For example Volkswagen TAS in Sarajevo Bosnia, Opel IDA in Serbia, Citroen and Renault in Slovenia etc.
@@SuperBosna98 Opel was never made in Kikinda, they only put sticker IDA on already completely finished cars. IDA was casting parts for GM and they were payed in Opel cars.
true, it's not neighboring Russia
They quickly went away from the russian sphere and did their own communism. Quite successfully for the time that it lasted.
@@derosiflo6524 not just that, btw east germany neither had a common border with the CCCP yet it was a satellite state
I have a joke on Trabant. So, I ordered it and paid double the starting price, I managed to enter the waiting list, and now I've been waiting for it for around five years. Oh, sorry, it's not Trabant, it's Cybertruck.
but you eventually got the Trabant. A luxury the Tesla simps waiting for the soon to be discontinued Cybertruck won't experience.
Worry not, Comrade. We in the West despise the Cybertruck too. If nothing else, we can agree on that.
CyberF&$k😂
@@MladenPostruznik not nice, deleting my accurate comment 👎⤵️🚽💩😂 not nice
I'd walk before owning a Cybertruck
Back when I was in Russia, I used to enjoy going for evening walks in Moscow, just to watch what came down the street.There was a remarkable amount of diversity in vehicles. Lots of old Soviet era cars still on the road in 2008. But everything from tractors to Lambos. Lots and lots of exoctic Italian, German, and British vehicles. I remember one Sunday morning as I was waiting for my driver to take me to Sheremetyevo and I saw a pink '50s Cadillac convertible cruise down the Garden Ring. It was a great place to be a car enthusiast.
Sounds great! Totally convinced a lot of info isn't exactly the truest..
@@MiloG209It's true but mostly because of how fucked the demographics of Moscow are, most of the country gets practically nothing from paying taxes, everything goes to the big cities, especially Moscow. The reason is the oligarchs and government officials live there, and thus anyone that wants a future goes to live there as well.
I have watched my share of car crash vids and can confirm
@@My_Old_YT_Account seems like oligarchs are a problem most places
Go live there and see the public transport in even the smallest cities.
Meanwhile in America, we don't have anything minus NEW YORK CITY @@My_Old_YT_Account
All seems more or less correct, exept Perestroyka was a period before USSR collapsed, not after.
Considering 1990s Wild West Russia and the rise of the oligarchs can trace their origins to Perestroika, yeah...
@@kwanlinus6999thanks to the USA and purposely inserting terror agents into Russia, yes
A crazy amount of mistakes and awful fact checking in this video, not just that one.
@@kristoffer3000 I mean who in the West can pronounce Zaporozhets anyway? Not so many mistakes in my opinion.
@@tulku_Onitinke I think that's more indicative of Western education and media being filled to the brim with propaganda.
If you were to peer outside the bubble you'd find that reality is very different to what you were told to think.
You got Moskvitch and Lada completely mixed up in the hierarchy. Moskvitch was never positioned above the Lada. It was on the same level at best and only if you compared it to the Lada 2101, the base model. These 2 cars were equal on paper but in practice Lada was still held in higher regard because of its superior reliability and build quality. Moskvitch 412 had a larger engine than Lada 2101 but that was its only advantage in this comparison. Everything else about it was inferior. Lada also had 2 higher trim levels- 2103 (later replaced by 2105) and 2106 (later replaced by 2107), both of which stood way above any Moskvitch and were perceived as luxury cars. In its time the 2106 was basically the most prestigious car available to citizens with no political affiliations
something something equal, but one was more equal than the other
The hierarchy of the Moskvitch and Lada changed often. The early 412s were considered more luxurious than Ladas, later versions however in the early 80s 412s and 2140s were considered less luxurious than the Lada, but after the debute of the 2141 AZLK (Moskvitch) was again considered a more luxurious brand in the late 80s
2106 was a successor of 2103 and 2107 was a luxury version of 2105, which was a successor of 2101
The 6th in Russia is an obsession. My girlfriend's dad has one and people every ex-soviet man will obsess over it
@@mordentus 2106 is not a successor of 2103, it's a cheaper version of it. 2107 was a successor of 2103.
I remember in the end of the 80’s, when there was still a lot of Ladas in Finland, there was a Russian and Estonian boom to come to Finland and buy up old, used Ladas. There was a severe shortage of spare parts there. In about one year, every Lada disappeared from Finland never to be seen again. They even came to our front door and asked my sister, who had a Lada, if she would sell it? She hesitated, because it worked just fine and she needed it for her job. They offered triple the sum it was worth and she sold it on the spot. The day after she bought a used BMW 3-series. That was a fun memory.
That was an interesting story. Thank you for sharing it with us. This story deserves more "likes". Cheers.
Where did you find that map? Greece was never a part of the Soviet Union or a satelite state.
Finland neather
Neither was Iran.
He has literally no idea what he's doing and it shows.
Made it up
The video was kinda politically motivated
3:27 yugoslavia wasnt actually a soviet satellite state but was its own kind of socialist state, a mix of both worlds, basically market socialism.
Tito
vid is to demonize and simplify complex topics. most likely NED funded
That's the best explanation. And "capitalism will collapse soon so take anothet IMF loan".
@@mememetal6631"Woops it didn't collapse, now we have bajilion of dollars of debt. Time to hit and watch from afterlife race war among balkans begin"
The map looked incorrect so I've found the source. It's an alternate history map by Kuusinen. Why tf was a fictional map used for the video??
Fun fact about Moskvitch: The very first post-war Moskvitch was just a pre-war Opel Kadett, because the Soviets took with them the Kadett production tools.
If it hadn't been for the west they'd still be in horse and buggy.
knew a Korean War veteran -- USMC
they captured a couple Soviet "jeeps" ~~ under the hood they recognized the copy of Ford Model A
They did the same in the GDR. The Production was in Eisenach a City in the east. The soviets and GDR took the parts and build the BMW 340. The Problem is, they called it EMW Not BMW. After that, there was a huge discussion who is right.
@@bemolp7498 Not quite right. They first called it BMW, but after a court ruling in 1951, they weren't allowed to and switched to EMW (Eisenacher Motorenwerke) and later on to AWE (Automobilwerke Eisenach). They continued to build the pre-war 321 and 327. The 340 was an updated version of the 326. The 342 - based on the 332, which became the 501/502 "baroque angel" in the West - didn't go into production. Then AWE had to produce the F9, a DKW model.
Как раз сейчас я читаю книгу Александра Андронова "Думы о труде". Просто интересно, как онлайн - переводчик переведёт это всё. Но это не моя проблема.
Первое. КИМ-10-52.
Второе. Вскрытие сидений в Кадетт К-38 показало, что в рант по краям сидений вставлена "калиброванная лиана с острова Ява". Услужливые голландцы поставляли Гитлеру из своих колоний. И как прикажете копировать яванскую лиану? В СССР? В 1947?
Pobeda means not freedom but Victory. Chaika means seagull.
The fear of specific cars was not unique to the Soviet Union.
My wife was from Argentina. And there the preferred vehicle during the "Dirty War" were black Ford Falcons (which were actually built in Argentina). And whenever she would see one like that on the road in the US she would get a little panic attack because of the memories that would bring back.
Eh... I'd love to see a good overview of soviet automotive industry - with all the pros and cons, and boy, do we have cons on them soviet cars... But sadly, that's not that video. I like your content, but this one had too many small, but glaring errors (like Pobeda, Moskvich placement in that hierarchy, total avoidance of Niva and so on...) and just too many jokes that kinda sound condescending. The errors show a shallow approach to research. It may be a fun video, but the rabbit hole of soviet automobiles is just so much deeper.
I agree, this video is just a rehash of past videos concerning Soviet cars, with the the prerequisite soviet car jokes.
Totally agreed. I mean he didn't even mention Uaz, the Invalidkas and different variants of Lada!
Yeah for all people shit on Lada’s they were well built and unlike the car they were based on actually had a heater.
@@deeznoots6241 Most of the people shitting on Ladas dont even know how sturdy they were, like any of our western cars could handle remote russia as well as a Lada Niva
black volgas were also a transport for usual officials. So a black was the best color you COULD get for a volga back then, there's also an anecdote about that
If the black Volga pulls up to an apartment in Russia, there is still a bit of worry in the faces of ex-soviet)
@@bldontmatter5319 Black volga wasn't a symbol of fear here, somewhere in poland or in mind of westerners, yes. But here it was a symbol of high status and post. People respect that car. I'm currently repainting mine in black with mint roof
@@bldontmatter5319
Black meant only status, nothing more. The KGB was busy with more important things than looking for some petty person who said that he did not like the USSR or did not like Khrushchev or Stalin. The REAL fear of black cars appeared only in the 90s, during times of instability, poverty and the heyday of banditry, when all sorts of organized crime groups drove them, so that it would be difficult to track them at night.
@@boyarin2269ПОНЯЛ брат.
@@boyarin2269 Why black with mint roof? You want to use it as a TAXI in Portugal? These are the official TAXI colors there...
You sound truly western for my russian ears. Just because there was a cold war doesn't mean that we hated EVERYTHING american or western. So in Russia it's a common knowledge of love of our leaders to american cars. From Stalin to Brezhnev they all were fascinated with cadillacs and fords. So if you stop paint everything with white and black, things will become more understandable.
Understand your leaders are hypocrites? 😂
Yeah man your right on there... It really wasn't MAD (mutual assured destruction) but MAC (m.a.control)
U$ and Russia were simply different franchises and needed each other to wield their powers and fears over the people !!! 👍
@@AJayZy
In fact the end of the cold war,
Was due to , the success
Of the west.
And products , capitalism, had won. At that point.
Now, 2024 , it may be the east , that. Well its being made to appear, to be a better system. A winning system.
@@Inverted.surferSteve Jobs and Bill Gates were the Dons in charge.
@@AJayZy You know you can like stuff without being a hypocrite right? It's a rather simple premise to grasp.
The cars of today are too expensive to buy new or used, and are wildly over-complicated and burdensome (both in terms of time and money) to repair.
Ignoring all other historical and political context: the world needs another Lada. A simple, cheap shitbox, that no matter how many times it falls apart, can easily be pieced back together for the average lower class person.
It exists, Lada Granta would be considered one of the cheapest cars in the world if not for covid, sanctions and skyrocketed price,lol. It is mostly 80's and 90's tech inside. But otherwise as unremarkable as it could be
@@beibotanovit's definitely not 80s 90s tech. What on EARTH are you smoking?
It's on par with a 2010s car, like a Chevy cobalt.
@@bldontmatter5319 yeah, looks are good🤣 As good as they can be on the cheapest car. But do not let them decieve
@@beibotanovI'm not deceived. It's literally tooled from a knock down kit from Chevy. It's LITERALLY A CHEVY COBALT. It has THE EXACT KNOCK DOWN KIT from 2010 for a CHEVY COBALT, same as the CHEVY NIVA, WHICH IS A KNOCK DOWN KIT FROM CHEVY.
@@bldontmatter5319 who told you this nonsense? Please point a finger at him. It is a domestic design, development of the so called AVVA project - a new 90's styled body with old 80's insides. It is much smaller, cheaper and worse overall than even a Cobalt. I have never seen a Cobalt for sale here, but used Dodge Neon, when they were available and relatively fresh, was considered a much better car, sold for almost twice as much and were popular as US used exports go.
Chevy Niva is a domestic design too - also a new 90's body with old 80's insides. Joint venture "GM-Avtovaz" was formed because VAZ was starved for money and could not afford model 2123 mass production. Most of Daewoo's early 2000' line was sold under Chevy brand here too
As an American living in China, as soon as you showed the All-New, All-Russian cars, I said "WAIT A MINUTE!"
the new moscvich is a disgrace; everything else is developed and assembled within the country with some components from other countries
19:19 Soviets and Soviet Russians never hated the US as a nation.
The hate was in official propaganda and targeted only the ruling class of capitalists and their govermnet cronies.
Since the end of ww ii soviet ppl were in western music, fasion and movie culture and much influenced by it. That included car designes as you demonstrated.
They even enjoyed Pepsi cola before Perestroika.
Hungarians talking on the bus: "Is he in the party? ...I don't know. Well, does he have a car? ...yes. He's in the party."
My father's parents wanted a car and had the money for it in the early '70s, here in Hungary
My grandpa had a small shop, making wooden barrels and such things, as an independent "company", the biggest enemy of the socialist state.
They waited 4 years for a Wartburg, but did not advance on the waiting list, so they took their money out and bought an army surplus GAZ-69, that was nearly 20 years old at the time.
Literally laughed out loud at "this phone number on wheels." What a fascinating new chapter in your excellent series.
The ZIL was preceded by the ZIM which was a license built pre-war Packard.
@richard169 - I was looking for exactly this comment before posting it myself. It had me spit out my coffee from laughting, nearly destroying my keyboard.
Common joke about Trabant (even though it's east german, i think it's apropriate)
How do you double a Trabant's value? Fill up its tank
There was also a joke about taking it inside the house during rain because they were made from effectively cardboard.
Or the classic British one, what do you call a soft top lada? a skip, then there's the classic, lada are fitted with heated rear windows so you can have warm hand while pushing it.
@@jh565bb I think this joke about the windows worked for most if not all eastern european cars. At least in poland.
@@jh565bb the heated rear window thing is actually for a Skoda (110R Open Top specifically)
They're made from duraplast which are old cotton blend clothes combined with phenol resins and pressed into shape. So basically bargain bin Bakelite.
@@jh565bb Funny because they're far more reliable than British cars of the time
4:48 Pobeda doesn't mean "freedom". Pobeda means "victory"
7:08 Oh my. By 1958 the repressions were very much over. The infamous black "Voronok" has nothing to do with Volga, it was GAZ M-1 and it was before the war.
7:25 no such story ever existed, don't be ridiculous, and there was no Russian mafia in the Soviet Union at the time. The term only appeared after the Afghan war.
10:30 there were no "dedicated" lanes or "ZIL lanes" as you called them. That's nonsense. The streets were closed off from time to time though, to let the higher ups pass. But that's no different from the practice in the US or Europe. And no it didn't result in "complete traffic jams" as the number of cars in Moscow was still low at the time.
13:10 Fun fact. 2101 was not known as the lada in USSR, that was the export name at the time. Inside the USSR it was known as kopeyka or 1/100 of a ruble, for its round headlights.
19:15 It's pronounced Volga Saiber, not Siber.
Good overview overall, though.
You skipped some segments and particular models.
First - is cars from SeAZ - very basic cars for disabled people, that giving for free 5-years rent. It was a very simple car, even didn't classified as car but as «мотоколяска» - something between cyclecar and motorized wheelchair, but it was a car.
You skipped the 1977 Niva - a Lada model, that was a compact crossover of the time before crossovers become mainstream, with four wheel drive.
You also put Moskvich above the Lada, but you are wrong. When VAZ was started, Moskvich became a cheaper car for rural people. It had a leaf springs suspension, only drum brakes (Lada has disk brakes in front) and poorer options. It was many quality issues.
And the last part of your video is slightly outdated. After a year, ABS, airbags etc. came back into Russian cars, something from China, something developed (or, maybe, reverse-engineered) locally.
moskvitch had disc brakes since 2140 model - and the choice wasn't bad, they put Girling 4 piston brake calipers there, the Gaz 3102 had the same ones
@@boyarin2269 Full drum 2140 was in production till 1987. Also Moskvich-412 was still in production until 1998, it was almost the same model that is in 1967.
@@vbifusful full drum was the country trim with reinforced suspension and lower compression ratio. And probably 2138 had these too
Niva is just fiat 126 on steroids
Pobeda is not freedom, its Victory! OMG(
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
That was bait for comments :)
you right a freedom in Russian is Svaboda (свабода )
@@parovozovo honestly couldn't have been anything else
boosting engagement for anything
What does a quote from 1984 have anything to do with this? @@john1703
Not going to mention the Lada Niva (now called Lada Niva Legend), the last Soviet Era SUV still in production today?
I was disappointed to not see the niva in this video , an iconic classic, I have one in my garage I am doing up rn , I am Australian
Wasn't the Niva marketed in the Western world as Riva?
@@bioLarzen it went by a lot of different names like the Cossack or in Australia we had the bushman and niva toro but they all came with niva badges, the Riva is an entirely different car
@@MB-iq6wq Oh, I see. I had incorrect info then. Thanks for the info!
Riva is the pretty name for the 2101 and all its various trim levels, Niva is the SUV. @@bioLarzen
At 3:36, that is so wrong at many levels... East Germany was NOT part of USSR, but member of the warsaw pact. Also the brand was NOT "Trabant", the car maker was called SACHSENRING and the car was named Trabant. Please when you make videos for infotainment, do your research right! You will NOT call Chrysler "Voyager", because they built a car calles Voyager?? Also what is with the WARTBURG car maker on the chart? You forgot it?
Warsaw pact enhanced, the name soviet union. Stop changing history like everyone else does to live in denial. There is a reason why East Germany got that name..
VEB Eisenach?
I made jokes about the LADA, then I bought one. As a joke. Let me tell you, there will be a day, a post apocalyptic day, when the last BMW has stolled, and there will still be bloody LADAs built in the 70s roaming the roads. Not comfy, not high tech, but they fucking work and if they dont you can fix them yourself. If you can't, you won't survive in a postapocalyptic world anyway so no loss there. They are great! Just don't expect a Rolls Royce, a Ferrari or a Bimer. The bloody thing start with no problem, when its so cold that I need to wear glows when opening the door. Or rather stop holding the door. When its so cold that the hand and the door will freeze into one, just turn the key and that thing will start right up. It's amazing. I love it. And the heater... its Hot, Sauna, and Hell have nothing on me temperature. I cant keep it on max when its 35 celcius below zero, well in those temperatures I allways drive dressed to leave the car anyway. I might have to pull a poor MB diesel driver out of his hypertech shithouse to safety. There's no way to not love the old LADA.
The m20 pabieda was also produced in Poland as Warszawa. The most luxury Polish car I think. Maybe a topic for next video? Warszawa, Syrena and Zuk?
Zuk could also be a good transition into the daewoo collaborations with eastern european car makers like FSO and ZAZ
@@Rosteg2406 It was some last time with the Polonez.
The more interesting are the ones that never went into production Syrena Sport, FSO Ogar, FSM Beskid etc.
@@bart6442 I am from Poland and because they were so rare, there is much more information about them. The regular ones and variants aren't so available. I found out so much from the Polonez video.
@@qv81 jakie to był film o Polonezie?
A Russian friend has a 1978 Lada. I've driven it, it was a delightful ruggedly built little car. Of course he takes good care of it. A couple years ago the engine failed. For $200 it was completely rebuilt. Parts are plentiful, repairs are simple and the whole car technologically is about equal to 1960 in the USA. That is great, you can fix it with a few hand tools, even far from a city or town. The bodies are thick galvanized steel with heavy duty suspension. If they were offered for sale in the USA, I think they would have been very popular. Imagine a reliable, better built 1975 Chevy Vega for 1/3 of the price.
"If they were offered for sale in the USA" -- The current safety regulations would never allow it. And yeah, I like simple cars of that era, but there it is.
@@mountainhobo Which is why I drive classic American iron. Sit down, turn the key, drive off. No touchscreen distractions, cryptic control symbols, seat belts, air bags, computers, navigation systems, environmental systems, etc. Can be had for a fraction of the cost of a new car, easy to work on, parts available, and so on. Gets you from point "A" to point "B" with decent fuel mileage. That's good enough for me.
@@mountainhoboAs if they had all the new safety regulations we have now in 1975
@@seb_1504 *Current* regulations. It seriously went over your head? I don't live in your imaginary world where it is 1975. Go ahead, and try to make it street legal *now*. Try to understand the post before responding.
@@mountainhobo You were the one that misunderstood things, no need to get so hostile when called out on it.
Pobeda is "victory". Moskvitch was a lower class than Lada. You didn't mentioned soviet microbuses (they were amazing). You ignored parts where western "partners" like Renault hold hostage the financial assets (i.e. stole money). Lada sold with airbags etc.
Too many mistakes. Bad work, must redo.
Dude, it is a 20 minute UA-cam video... not the Rise & all o the Roman Empire. 🤷♂
Also - Soviet micro busses...? (I am sure they were both luxurious & powerful)
@@BatCaveOz Getting facts wrong and being time cobstrained is two different things.
Yeah poor research with a condescending tone gives this video an interesting vibe, I'm no eastern bloc car expert but ask anyone from that time and place - the Moskviches were considered much less prestigious than owning a Lada, which was top of the line car for anyone not an official or anyone 'important'.
It was also a tiered based system when it came to the waiting lists - usually you could not get a Lada as a first car (very workplace dependent), you would need to own a ZAZ for X amount of years or if you're lucky a Moskvitch first. Then you would get in queue to get your shiny new Lada while driving one of the 'lower' cars.
Also offroaders like the later Lada Niva or earlier 4x4 Moskvitch (completely skipped in the video) were prioritized to agriculture workers. The way you bought a car was to apply for a purchase request in your workplace, that's where the quotas and waiting lists came in and all of that easily exploitable corruption as mentioned in the video.
17:00 you missed a decade of renewed soviet cars of both Moskvich and Lada with '79 self designed 4x4 Lada Niva as a peak of soviet car industry.
14:25 The basic premise is wrong, the Moskvitch was WAY below the Lada, like in Czechoslovakia it was literally one 1/3 cheaper than the Lada, it had the same price tag as the basic Škoda 100 and would often sell so poorly it was sold next year with a 15% discount. And the GAZ 13 Chaika was basically unpurchasable for personal use. The ZAZ was much closer to the VW than the Fiat 500 as the lowest part of the market that the Fiat 500 represented wasn’t really a thing in the USSR.
Hey, there is the Polski Fiat 126p Maluch, that's the Eastern Bloc Fiat 500
@@kwanlinus6999 And it was never sold in the Soviet Union.
Heck to continue the Czechoslovak comparison, it was literally only 10% less expensive than the Moskvitch. And actually more epensive if you bought the last year's Moskvitch.
@@eozcompany9856 How do they compare in terms of prices to the Trabants and Wartburgs?
@@kwanlinus6999 In Czechoslovakia Trabant was way cheaper cost about 36 500 Kčs compared to 42 000 Kčs for the Maluch, Moskvitch was 45 000 Kčs for the weaker and 52 000 Kčs for the more powerful model, the kombi version was the most expensive version of the Moskvitch at 58 000 Kčs but also imported in extremely low numbers. Compared to that the Lada 1200 cost 58 000 Kčs and the top of the line Lada 1600 76 500 Kčs. Wartburg cost about 57 000 Kčs for the sedan and 64 000 Kčs for the Tourist but compared to the Moskvitch it basically never stayed around and was way more desirable than the Moskvitch. To throw in a few more cars; Dacia 1300 went for 66 000 Kčs, Ford Cortina 1600 about 85 000 Kčs, Škoda 120 GLS cost 66 000 Kčs and Fiat 125p 1500 cost 65 400 Kčs.
@@eozcompany9856 The outlier here seems to be the Wartburg. No idea why it was so desirable despite being powered by a two-stroke, when the Lada 1200 has a four-stroke and is almost the same price (Maybe because the waiting lists were so much longer?)
The Moskvitch and Dacia seems to face the greatest ridicule of the normal sized cars. The former had an Opel Kadett engine dating back to WW2, while the latter had a joke that only the ones built on a Wednesday worked.
I guess the Skodas were quite desirable among the sports car community of eastern bloc, if there is one I guess?
Bro, your fact-checking should be better. All over the place with this one, too many mistakes to continue pinpointing them
Proof
@@w210black Just read other comments
He has literally no idea what he's talking about and he's super pompous/biased (like most westerners)
That applies to every so-called 'historical' car video on UA-cam. Smart-asses all over spouting off about chit they haven't the vaguest clue.
If UA-cam had a less-convoluted way of making money and compensating people, it wouldn't have gained the new reputation of the Worlds Greatest Liar Marketplace.
@@w210black He has put Yugoslavia AND GREECE into the eastern block lmao.
A New Russian's son complains to his father: "Daddy, all my schoolmates are riding the bus, and I look like a black sheep in this 600 Merc."
"No worries, son. I'll buy you a bus, and you'll ride like everyone else!"
actually it was a joke about georgian son with a context of Georgia being the wealthiest republic
I thought this joke was about a Saudi or an Emirati in London
Yea supposedly
this story sounds more Western to be fair but okay
I know somewhat different joke.
New Russian's son complains to his father. "Daddy, all my schoolmates laugh at me for riding a bus, I want BMW" ... few days later.
Sorry son, I was only able to acquire 30%. Other shareholders didn't want to sell.
Despite this article being a bit biased I enjoyed it. Having travelled extensively in the former Soviet Union and later the CIS I can vouch that many of these vehicles are still in everyday use. I remember being in a Lada in Tblisi in Georgia when one of the rear wheels came off, the driver just carried on and dropped us off as planned about 200m up the road
One thing to note however, is that since the inception of the USSR in 1922, to its dissolution in 1991, Russia had been under almost a complete embargo by the rest of the planet.
As such, while western countries were allowed to specialise in specific export sectors of their economies and make up the shortfall by importing from other countries, the Soviet Union was forced by these sanctions to be completely self-sufficient, which meant it could not specialise it's economy towards a specific type of production, such as car building, and instead had to be able to produce everything it needed domestically.
It is this context that I believe proves that a planned economy would still be far more efficient and beneficial in the modern day, as despite being beset on all sides by hostile powers, weathering the brunt of two world wars, civil war, invasion, blockade, and sabotage, the Soviet Union still managed to go from a backward feudal system under the Tsar, to sending the first man to space in 44 years, and it was the first in the world to grant universal suffrage to women, universal healthcare, housing, childcare, and guaranteed employment, all starting from an economy in 1922 that was equivalent to that of Brazil.
We can only Imagine what they would've been capable of without the blockades, or the destruction. We can only imagine what we would be capable of under a similar system, starting from an economy multiple times larger.
You make a strong case.
However, if I was to have vigorously disagreed with you back in the day, the problemette was that I would have risked arrest.
Planned economies tend to be paired with totalitarian regimes. I would trade apparent freedom for any amount of economic wellbeing.
I am well aware that freedom is in short supply everywhere at the moment.
underated comment. Finally a man with some general culture
Except a great deal of that industrialization was planed and built by American and Italian engineers
Self sufficient?😂😂😂
“Western Technology And Soviet Economic Development” (1917-1930, 1930-1945 and 1945-1965)-Antony Sutton
@@jeffbybee5207 probably the only implication that the Italians had in the Soviet industry was the fact that they helped them with the creation of the Lada by giving them license from fiat for the first lada models
The Soviet Union is not Russia alone
The communist bloc is not the Soviet Union alone
He is a "typical" Westerner, they don't know anything
Yeah, but the rest was taken by Russia by force.
@@SpicyTexan64 The USSR was made up of fifteen republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine.
the soviet union disappears no longer exists
*Russia is not the Soviet Union
Yugoslavia no longer exists
* Serbia is not Yugoslavia
everyone who ruled the communist
Soviet Union was not Russian
insists on mixing Russians and Soviets?
@@SpicyTexan64 Communists took power after a civil war in which 14 million people died, most of them Russians
The Bolshevik Party was predominantly non-Russian
the 8 who led the communist Soviet Union were not Russian insist on mixing Russians and Soviets?
Don't forget the sino-asian sovet states
Not just quite a few Moskviches and Ladas ended up abroad, but actually most of them ended up there, up to 80% of total production. It's just overall modest production numbers and barebonity of those cars which didn't make them appealing to preserve, that made them a rare sight abroad nowadays. And that was why USSR citizens had to wait years after paying just to get their car (after paying some more due to inflation).
The reason for that was the soviet state being in a constant need of foureign currency to maintain international trade due to having a basically unconvertible inner rouble. So that task was achieved by exporting oil, grain, fish, agricultural equipment... and cars.
Yeah, quickly overlooked fact. The fact that the Soviet Union achieved the things with the pressure they were under deserves credit. They didn't have it easy.
@@theothertonydutchthanks to the west, and the idea that the US dollar is mightier than all, and therefore all countries need to suffer
@@theothertonydutch Just one more restrictive meat grinding machine under pressure of a bit less restrictive meat grinders))
All in all the difference by the end of 20th century was solely due to stubborn insistance of USSR to stay deaf for it's citizens and not even try to evolve in any meaningful non-recursive way.
Modern day Russia is long way back on that recursive self-autofellative political course. Guess, that's what are the true russian circles.
Only the finite nature of human existence stops them from winding lower and lower through centuries, heh.
Some Asian countrues, however, somehow escape this rule - by a wisdom of giving birth to mentally elderly pricks, I guess)))
The Soviets were doing quite a lot of grain importing back in the 80's and early 90's. It was quite common to see Soviet flagged bulk ships on the Great lakes and getting loaded up in Duluth. It struck me as odd when I was a kid seeing the "enemy" ships getting loaded up.
Leaves a lot to be desired honestly.
Could've gone more into the history, and could've read some newer sources for the ending, not 1 year old stuff. ABS and airbags are back, the ESP systems are being tested still as they need 2 climate cycles for testing (winter-summer-winter). Emissions equipment is back in, and it wasn't really ever away, they still had catalysts, just the engine ecus weren't set up to not slow down production.
And he didn't even mention that Vladivostok and pretty much most of the Russian east is packed with JDM imports which are still steadily coming in to this day.
@@Diwasho neither that the gaz 14 was banned by Gorbi and all the documentation and tooling was destroyed by his orders.
Or that GAZ did experiment with new models.
The 3103-3104-3105 family, the 3111 and others.
Or that with the struggle after the fall of the union, the auto makers started making some very strange models, like the Lada Nadezhda, the GAZ Ataman and the long Moskviches.
There's so much more explore.
Instead he went on the beaten path of downplaying the work of the russians and ending on a low note.
You're right; the Russian automotive industry is the envy of the world 🙄
@@Random-nf7qb Yeah, the opening praising the free market was a dead giveaway about the level of the rest of the video.
Let's not forget that Ed, a dutchman, has also likely grown up on anti-communist propaganda and news-reports about a drunk Jeltsin who finally got replaced by stronk leader Putin. Hell, most of the west was on Putin's dick until the last decade and past three years. It wouldn't surprise me if he thought that Putin was actually a pretty cool guy before all that shit went down, though that's just conjecture from my side and wasn't a particularly unpopular opinion to begin with. Ya know, before all thát.
Just a disclaimer: I'm not saying that the Soviet Union wasn't up to some horrible de-humanizing shit, but so was the west. The ideology behind it barely matters. The whole making fun of Russia for basically having to rebuild itself after the collapse of the SU must have had a very traumatic and long lasting impact on inhabitants of Russia.
What’s the difference between a Lada and a golf ball?
You can drive a golf ball more than 200 yards.
What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill?
A miracle.
If you ever think that your life has no purpose, just remember that there is someone somewhere that is fixing the brakes on a Lada.
Interesting fact: Lada still owns the record for the most successful launch of a new brand on the Canadian market. They were not particularly well-made and they required more tinkering than other cars of the era, but at least they were designed to cope with winters very similar to ours. For many years, many could even be seen plying the taxi trade in our cities. They also opened the gates to an influx of other Eastern European cars, such as the Dacia and Skoda, once it became very clear that Canadian car buyers were not opposed to buying cars from communist countries. This lasted for many years, but eventually the Soviet inability to evolve their product caught up to them. Lada did eventually launch the all new FWD Samara, but it still had no options for an automatic transmission or a/c and by then Hyundai had arrived with its basic and inexpensive RWD Pony and fully-equipped Stellar, both of which offered the options the Canadian market clamored for, and it was curtains for Lada, Dacia, and Skoda.
It’s so weird but I love Soviet automobiles and especially the ZIL 114
They are interesting, but I wouldn't own them because of build quality
They probably no different from US cars of same era build wise especially the High official stuff
ZIL 117 is a car I will never own but won't stop dreaming about it
Me, Trabant Universal, Wartburg 353, Lada Riva 2107 or whatever looks like that.
@@jh565bbthe Volga is on par with US build quality of the time. I've happened to own a Volga gaz-24 in Russia, and an UAZ hunter.
They're both on par with the 1988 f250 and 1970 f100 I've had
Shallow video on a subject that deserves much more in-depth and nuanced discussion. Jij kan beter dan dit, Ed!
"Shallow" meaning that it wasn't a 12 hour long documentary... gotcha. 👍
@berkeleyfuller-lewis3442no, he's wrong on nearly every single little detail. Even basic things like "pobeda" meaning FREEDOM...
Well, the ranking of soviet cars is not quite right. Ladas were ALWAYS more presigious and pricier than Moskvitches.
Also you missed a few cars from 1940-50s. Moskvich 400 series - in essence a pre-war Opel Kadett.
Before purely governmental ZiL-111 there was ZiS-110, which was prodused even in much larger numbers, was used not only by party officcials and even Stalin personally, but also as premium taxicab, and as ambulance.
And even before that, there was a pre-war ZiS-101.
As for the deficite, it have become a thing only in the early 60s. Before that you could buy freely almost any car: Pobeda, Volga, Moskvich or even ZiM-12. As long as you had enough money for that. Which at first was a problem and rare thing, in the country that suffered heavily from massive war destruction.
@obywatelcane6775really goes to show you that things were not as they seemed. The 2106 was idolized, even in the west it was the status of "normal" and usable, given the time period, where power steering and AC weren't even common yet
I have a 1974 Zhiguli 2103 which is what you are calling Lada, a later name. It is indestructible and starts first time, has a high wheelbase and stronger suspension for snow and bad roads (here in Latvia) and does not rust. The steel is thick and I love it. It is hard to steer as it has no power steering, thats all the problem if you mind that.
Dude, in my opinion, you have one of the best, if not the best, automotive channels on UA-cam! I'm a guy who restores and customizes old American Iron. Great job!
Honestly, it's never been easier to get LITERALLY any car to Russia than now.
For example, if you want BMW - you can get used one from Korea, Germany (more like from every country from EU), UAE, USA etc., or a new one from the exact same source countries.
More than that, now the whole chinese domestic market cyborgs on wheels are avaliable to buy here, in Russia. Lixiang, Zeekr (idk exactly, were they passed on EU market or not), Yangwang (luxury BYD brand), HiPhi and much more other brands, known only inside China. In late 80s, 90s and early 00s we appreciated JDM, now we are one on the first nations to experience CDM. Grey imports in its best.
And how many of those cars are stolen? Big, big problem in Canada right now.
@@poochie49 It was so much worse, let's say like 10-15 years ago, because the lack of cameras. Of course, you can't fully delete thefts from society, but i think the situation is better here, than anywhere in America. And there's another reason - all new cars (except the cheapest version of Lada Granta) came with immobiliser from like 10 years or even more. So, no "kia boys" here
Are those Chinese cars doing ok?
@@AJayZy overall, yes, but chinese have a simple rule here: you get - what you pay for.
@@dankmemes8569 Be careful a lot of their EVs are catching fire
In the 80s, when I was a student, I swapped an MOT failure for a Lada. The drivers window was held up with a wooden wedge in the door and the rest with bodge tape. The choke had to be pulled out at lights and junctions to stop it stalling and the handbrake lever snapped off on a particularly steep hill. I parked it on a hill so I could bump start it as it would rarely start on the key. It lasted a year before I scrapped it. Fond memories.
@Hello James how are you doing?
I hope you will make a video on the rest of the Warsaw pacts car brands, there's some interesting ones in there.
Respect to everyone in the comment section that is clearly very knowledgeable about the Russian and Eastern Bloc auto industry. Seriously, that is one jungle that I wouldn't even dare enter, so complicated and convoluted.
And respect to Ed for even trying. Sure, there might have been errors but this was better than most. And entertaining as always
Ничего. Мы скоро вымрем, и блогеры смогут писать об СССР любую ахинею!
@@karlwalther sorry, can't translate it
@@seventysevenfiji вот и хорошо! Вам спокойнее будет!
@@karlwalther They already write whatever nonsense they want because Westerners have no idea.
That's what 100 years of propaganda gets you, nobody questions the media when they've heard the same lies so many times.
I would not say this is better than most, it's so full of errors and shameless bias that if he had any creative integrity he'd take it down and re-do it from scratch.
nice work Ed, genoten van je video !
my family's originally from the USSR, and my paternal grandparents had a GAZ-21 that they bought in 1963. They said that they had to borrow money from every family member in order to buy it, and the reason why they chose it over the Lada or other affordable options is that, due to the high price, there was no multi-year long queue to receive one.
in those days you could sell the Volga to the Caucasus for for three times more
@@abdulabdanahib9617 They kept it for around 20 years.
This video is looking at Soviet cars completely back-to-front with the usual Animal Farm smarminess. The development of automobiles was always a secondary consideration, even after the Great Patriotic War. This was partly due to the socialist ideal of developing public transportation first (which the USSR did to great success) and partly due to the sheer devastation that the Great Patriotic War wrought. Developing cars for private use, especially when the material conditions made it so that they were in effect luxury goods instead of the necessities they were in the West, would have been a waste of precious resources when your country had to rebuild from a smoking crater. Hence, the focus on trucks and buses vs. passenger cars just made sense right up until the USSR had finally rebuilt enough to launch its first true people's car in the form of the brilliant AvtoVAZ/Lada 2101.
Japan did it better😮
lada 2101 is a Fiat, even after ALL those years rebuilding they still couldn't make a simple people car... George Orwell was a brilliant visionary and spot on.
@@Blackadder75 Not really. The 2101 started out as a FIAT 124, but so many changes were made to the platform that it could'nt be considered the same car anymore. More than 800 in fact by AvtoVAZ engineers. For starters, the body was 10% thicker to prevent rust issues, and the engine was so much improved that FIAT themselves even used it as a performance upgrade. This engine was a 1,198-cc single-overhead-cam unit that was all new. It also had a lot of room for future expansion, eventually hitting 1.7L.
George Orwell was neither spot on nor brilliant about anything. He was a colonial cop for the British Empire in Burma who was later detested by his own comrades in the Spanish Republican side (saying that he should have been fighting for the other side). He flirted with Nazism, as evidenced with this quote from the New English Weekly dated March 21, 1940:
"I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power . . . I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. . . ."
Oh yeah, he also sold out his "fellow" socialists to the CIA as a snitch and raped 17-year-old Jacintha Buddicom when he was 15. As for his so-called "greatest work", 1984, its just a mediocre carbon-copy of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We".
@@jakekaywell5972 not to mention ladas experiments with rotary engines
@@curiousgeorge5992 as long as the US did them the Favorite Nation thing. As soon as they got jealous and turned the switch off, Japanese economy growth has halted and remains such for the last 35 years. While Russia had kinda 2 years without any sanctions in a century
This video is so coloured by ideology and propaganda that it's just ridiculous.
Absolute low point of an otherwise pretty good channel.
You could've just had a 5 second short that said "gommulism bad" and left it at that.
I don't follow the channel but I gave this a chance hoping it wasn't going to be the case, unfortunately you're very correct. "Putin's personal project to blah blah blah" - yup, he had every intention to invade Ukraine "unprovoked".
given that the Chinese car industry already terrifies the Western car makers, I wouldn't be so condescending with the future of the Russian industry. other than that, very good video as always.
chinese industry doesn't terrify the west, only the chinese government's financial practices does.
and yes , we know asians can make good cars, Japan and South Korea have lead the way
@@Blackadder75 I guess the new tariffs imposed to Chinese products and accusations of 'over capacity' (whatever that is) are just friendly welcoming nudges huh?
@@Blackadder75 That's a ridiculous take, you've gobbled up the narrative where we in the West can help our car manufacturers as much as we want but China can't, not that they're even doing that much.
Thanks Ed. I don't know where else you would find this very interesting information. I feel well informed thank you.!
Nice to see a car channel finally cover some good cars
If you ever want to drive a 24 Volga, hit me up, i invite you to come to Austria :)
I have been waiting for this episode for a long time! I myself own the outdated cost-cutting GAZ 2410 Volga from 1989, currently the only one registered in Austria. Even if this was just a rough overlook of the history with some tiny hickups, this is probably my favourite video you have made, since this part of automotive history is not really talked about too much here. About the current revival thing that is going on in russia: Russians and even Government official hate the fact that none of it is made in russia. The new Moskvich was hated, I can only pray for Volga.
Edit: the Lada Niva and the UAZ 452 are still being made, with barely any changes.
awesome! Yet Ed's would be probably as mocking as DeMuro's review.
UAZ 452 and it's minibus sis are now handmade in a bad sense of the word and certified as tractors, BTW
Part two: Soviet 4x4s and offroaders. Please. And thanks for this video!
Forgot to mention that Volga is in fact back! However they are rebadged Chinese cars just like the new Moskvitchs
how this channel is just NOW getting on my radar I do not know, instant sub
I wish that the many channels about technical history would refrain from including political history since most of them get it wrong. The summary of capitalism vs communism (well, socialism actually) in this video is a typical example.
Politics overload gets off-putting after a while. Moscow has far better subway stations than New York - and less homeless people on the streets. And Russia is not bankrupt.
Lots of people have jobs cleaning those subway stations.
ZiL is pretty interesting
ZiL began as AMO, but was changed to ZiS after Stalin took over and decided to name the factory after himself, the ''S'' standing for ''Stalina''. This changed after Stalin dies and De Stalinization was carried out, causing the factory's name to be changed to ZiL. ZiS made the ZiS 5 which served a huge role in the Red Army in WW2. In 1947 they made the ZiS 150, which went on to become one of the most recognizable Soviet trucks and was licensed to allied countries, like China and Romania. ZiS also made the ZiS 112, a race car with an interesting ''cyclops'' design similar to the GM LeSabre. When they changed to ZiL they made the ZiL 130 and 131, some of the most iconic Russian trucks ever made. The 131 is easily recognized for it's light blue color and white grill. The 131 was also made all the way up until 2012, when ZiL ceased to exist. There's many others that could be talked about, like KamAZ and MAZ, and even the Yugoslav FAP, communist trucks have always been fascinating to me
Got damn I’m early to this, Ello Ed when you talking about Swedish cars?
Saab 💪 I’m in USA and fell in love and sourced some Hirsch Troll Saab parts to try to build the dream saab we never got in the states! Also have a friction tester saab 9-5 let’s not forget saab started in aircraft then 2 strokes then the turbos and ice racing rally history they have! I call saab the smallest super car company as they just went all out, created great, safe cars and had so many custom or special options. Sad they are gone but not forgotten. Plan on attend Saab Owners Convention 2024 in Portland Oregon USA
I'd like to see someone talk about the Swedes' transition between driving on the left to driving on the right...
Now swedish cars are Chinese. So...
@@timoteiafanasie4894 Must be why they're so nice now then
@@kristoffer3000 yeah, now they are looking more like plastic toys, indeed
The Soviet Union's best shape was from the mid 50's to the early 60's. That's when their economy peaked, and they created a lot of things.
6:40 I think it was actually a bit of a mix between the 1949 Ford "Shoebox" and the 1954 Ford Custom.
19:10 After 14 years, a new model of the Volga will be made this summer called the C40. Sadly, it's just a Chinese rebranding of "Changan."
correction: the Soviet Union was not made up of Russia and satellite states, Russia and 15 other republics and autonomous regions made up the Soviet Union, Hungary, East Germany, or the other Warsaw Pact nations were not a part of the USSR nor necessarily puppets of the USSR.
also i don't know if you made the map, but in 3:25; Yugoslavia was not aligned with the USSR or the Warsaw Pact and neither was Greece, which never went communist but only had a civil war.
1 what o you mean by "eventually forming the Soviet Union"? It was formed decades prior to the Cold war.
2 the two entities you've placed in your infographics "Russia plus the republics" and "the US plus Western countries" are not by any means equal. you probably mean the US+the West and the USSR+the Eastern block (Poland, Hungary, etc.)
2230 & 0c outside in Canberra AU - seemed like a sh*tty night, then Ed drops ep.64! Cheers all!
Kinda chilly for the ACT; it's about 31C here in N. Ohio today...Ironically, I first heard of Lada when I lived there (1974-76); a long-defunct U.S. car magazine, "Imported Car Performance", had an article titled "Better Lada Than Never", and our school (Lyneham High) had a copy of "World Cars: 1974") in the library, which I devoured during class breaks!
Compared to the current carpocolypse in USA, do you have a point? Long live the 5 year plan!
car prices in Russia are kinda 2-3 times higher than in 2019, the cheaper the car the more it got pricier. So the first place in proudly ours!
Buses are better than having car's for every person, that's one thing the USSR won with, we in Eastern Europe enjoy such things as sidewalks, and public transport. (You may say something about the quality of the sidewalks, but that's just due to our current government's not giving a f-)
I would be very happy to use public transportation. It's not available where I live and when I travel I must go a long way to be anywhere. This is true for many people in America and I would think it's the same in the former Soviet Union because of its tremendous size. European countries are rather small in comparison so I believe I would use public transportation and perhaps a bike as well.
i remember my mother cried when the old moskvitch was taken to the junkyard after it served the family for like 20years, my dad was a mechanic so he could repair our cars, skoda, lada, moskvitch, they were simple, cheap to maintain and good enough for getting from point A to B
"Pobeda" in russian means victory, not freedom
4:48 - Победа doesn't mean freedom, it means "victory"...
I hope the next episode about communist cars is about the entire non-USSR bloc. I was so annoyed that the Donut Media vid about communist cars only talked about the USSR and East Germany as if they were the only eastern bloc countries.
That seems like an unusual thing to be annoyed about.
@@BatCaveOz Not really? It just takes more than an incredibly basic understanding of history to be annoyed at stuff like that.
Or they talk about "soviet" countries, but they mean whole communist block, not just Soviet Union, that's even more annoying.
Another fun fact about Ladas: for some foreign markets, it was shipped with air conditioner or automatic transmission, but these options were never available for the domestic market.
Also he does not talk about production number.. only hundred of thousands per year while USA made millions per year. Often there was a 10+ year wait… unless your traded a winning lottery ticket for a car now.
A bit cheap to bash on soviet cars, it is not really original, also did you ever ride in 50's european car? Not much better.. I know cars in the Soviet Union had many problems, but you make it out to be a total disaster, how many European cars last 40 years?
SEATs, Vw, pre 95 Mercedes, pre 92 Renaults, Citroen only the 2cv, In latin america we have those runing in horrible roads since forever.
Where did you find the map at 3:40.? Greece was never a satellite state of USSR, especially the time that it was a nato state. My God,..
And one more addition - the Moskvish was always lower than Lada in the product stack.
And OLDER.
From Ronald Reagan:
Man: *pays for a new car*
Dealership guy: Ok, come back in ten years and get your car
Man: Morning or afternoon?
Dealership guy: It’s 10 years from now, what does it matter?
Man: Well the plumber’s coming in the morning
Daddy McKarthy would be proud. You really cant make a video about Russia nowadays without an insult, lame joke, or weird heresay like ZIL lines in Moscow. Oh well, dunno why youtube even showed it to me in the recommendations. "Classic car connaisseur" my ass, i expected Chaika garage tour, but instead i've got "Let me explain about your country" moment.
It seemed to me, that farm tractors were in larger demand than cars, for a long time.
We used to see people on tractors, sometime pulling carts or wagons behind them.
It would make sense, when you consider the huge portions of land that was country, farmland, or isolated villages, far from the modernism of the bigger cities.
I don't blame the Russians for imitating the American cars. I wish American cars could go back to those days when style was something more than plastic bumpers and plastic everything else!
You used to be able to look under the hood and see an engine... Now, "just more plastic." So much so, the engine is usually completely hidden.
Nice job on the video. In Car and Driver magazine in the 70's there was an article about the Moskvich factory which said it was the last fully self-contained factory in the world. Raw materials went in and cars came out. Even the tires were made there. I always wanted to hear more about that factory but have never been able to find anything here in North America.
which is VERY inefficient, thats why Japanese and Western factories moved to a system of sub contractors, where every business specializes in certain parts.making the whole much cheaper, faster and higher quality
@@Blackadder75 Why can't the subcontractors be on the same plot?
@@Klovaneer because the guy that invented a better disk brake lives 500 km away and build his factory there and not on the same plot. And the guy that makes the best car batteries lives 700 km the other way..... get the idea? Maybe economic forces bring these people together if that saves money, but maybe not, the market will decide what is best and not central planning which has always been wasteful and bad for invention, as communist history shows
@@Blackadder75 Funny i have just watched a video on Superfest, extremely durable glass that failed in free market because it didn't need replacement.
@@Klovaneer The throw-away-economy is a recent phenomenon, most of the history of western capitalism quality won and people would re-use items as long as possible. I never heard about Superfest, so I looked it up, oh its drinking glassware
I read the coca cola comment about not breakable being a bad thing, but that is commercial talk about cheap cafe glasses that get tossed around and break often. . Normal people don't use coca cola branded glassware, but just plain ones and they can last a lifetime. I got most of my nice looking glasses from my grandparents who bought them in the 1960s-1980s and they still are all perfectly useable and shining , as are the ones I bought myself as a student in the 2000s. Sure sometimes one breaks if a person is careless, but that's ok. That is just a normal aspect of life.
And the Volga with V8 engines for KGB really exists?
Yep, 5.5L all aluminium V8 + automatic transmission taken from other GAZ model - Chaika.
I have heard several say it was, a few have appeared on UA-cam, but maybe after market upgrades. I have never seen even an image of the engine bay of the much rumored Wankel Engine version (probably because they may have only made a few hundred, but thousands of engines, as it probably went through them like the NSU Ro80).
@@jon-paulfilkins7820 Sure, some of them are in fact aftermarket installations, made after the fall of SU, when these 5.5L engines have become available from the decommissioned Chaikas, but what is more significant - from military equipment, for example BRDM-2 armored vehicle, which also had these engines.
But true KGB Volgas were made by GAZ itself. Model GAZ 24-24. And all of these factory made Volgas had mandatory automatic transmission.
In fact, previous GAZ models also had modifications for KGB, GAZ M-21 also had V8 equipped variants, even earlier GAZ M-20 for KGB had inline flathead 6, when basic cars still had inline 4s.
Hey there friend! Great to see you cover up this bit of history. I'm from Ukraine. And everything that you said is 100% correct.
The history of automobile industry in the Soviet Union was a simple knock off. Everything that was possible to steal or to implement without permission.-was done. For example, my country produced as you have mentioned, the Zaz. Originally the vehicle was meant to be serving the lowest levels of soviet society and the disabled citizens. Believe me, it was a miracle to have one in your family. I am the owner of 968M which has proudly been serving my family for 29 years. Yes, the Zaporozets is a severely faulty and unreliable vehicle. Especially considering its age at this point. Yet this exact vehicle has been deep down in the heart of Ukrainians nation. So much so that we have made up tons of anecdotes about it. One of them goes like this; they say that it's better to experience one hour of shame in Zaporozets then commuting on a public transport. So everybody was well aware of the faults and absolute rubbishness of production of this vehicle but at the same time, it was freedom to move wherever you needed and haul things. A close friend of my father once traveled from Ukraine to Moscow with full load of 3 tons on ZAZ 968. (with a trailer atached). That took place in the 90s.
People were trying to earn money in any way possible. The Soviet reality dictated that one should firstly get in a line for a garage permission. Thus having garage, you are only then allowed to enter the line for a vehicle. So having a vehicle was pretty much a social elevator at those times. Even more so having a garage was a very important social instrument. It was the place where men could spend their leisure fixing up and perfecting their vehicles, which were absolutely rubbish from the factory. And also having a good drink in circle of close friends.
Currently Ukraine unfortunetely is not prodicing any cars. There were recent attempts to revive the LUAZ pick up trucks. Turned out a knock off chineese rebadged model. The same way every modern Russian car is essentially a knock off as well. The so-called modern VAZ (LADA) models are produced under the license of Renault. Essentially being a licensed re-badged French vehicles. The quality is even worse than Renault.
The same deal goes on with their military potential where they showcase "absolute innovations", well at least in their minds. In reality, the vehicles would never be let on to a battlefield in a Western block countries. No safety regulations no quality of handcraft and production.
Unfortunately, we Ukraunians were left with the Soviet legacy after the fall of USSR. The Soviet machinery, which we are forced to use now to protect ourselves from the invader - Russian army. Yes, there is a development of modern military vehicles, heavy duty machinery and other military units crucial for our war. Unfortunately the government of Ukraine is too corrupt to license production and mass distribution of the needed armed vehicles and heavy machinery to the frontiers of the invasion line.
Moreover, some additional information on the topic that you have touched upon in your video; foreign car companies left Russian market only officially. Whereas unofficially they still offer brand new zero mileage vehicles, all around Russia. Even more so, there are offers of luxury and sports vehicles widely spread around main cities as Moscow and Saint Pitersburg. This essentially means that our allies have betrayed us and sanctions are only on paper, and there are no real counter measures taken against the threat of Russia.
Finally, I'd like to thank you again for covering this crucial topic as part of automotive history. No matter how controversial the Soviet cards are - they are still part of the world, and they affected the minds of people who lived under this forced union.
I would correct you a bit. Moskviches were cheaper and much more available than the Ladas, therefore I consider the Moskvich as an Opel or a Ford and Lada more like BMW. VAZ 2103/2104 with 1500cc engines were pretty quick in their time, compared to ZAZ or Moskvich.
Yes the video is very biased. Putting an Lada on the same footage as a VW beetle - com' on!
Peace! from Dresden / Germany
the first Moskvich was a copy of Opel. They took out the entire factory as war reparations
@@abdulabdanahib9617 that's absolutely correct, thanks for the remark!
If you want to know USSR cars better, ask me whatever you want, especially about GAZ Volga! I own two!
Really, really nice!
что смазать важнее, шкворни или червяка? и можно ли вставить в кузов 24 или 2410 детали от более похожих на автомобиль поздних - двигатель Крайслер, гидроусилитель, дисковые тормоза?
@@beibotanov какой червяк?) там кроме шкворней и резьбовых втулок в ходовке, ничего не мажется)
@@beibotanov а остальное да, двигатель, ходовку можно переставить, но много нюансов надо знать чтоб все нормально работало
I want one of those black Volgas. I'll take the Chika in black sedan, too.
Russians can't get western cars. Garage 54: "Watch us tow our latast experiment out of pile of snow with our H2 Hummer."
Волги на ЗМЗ, а именно так называется двигатель, будут довольно медленными, даже для того времени. Детали для таких белых ворон ты хрен где найдёшь за пределами России. Лучше купить старенькую s80, чем Волгу, хотя бы целее будешь
'Chaika' - I'm not sure if I spelled it correctly - but that's simply the Russian word for "seagull."
In the USSR, the Lada was originally called Zhiguli (this is the name of the low mountains in the places where the plant was built). However, when these cars began to be exported, they had to change the name to Lada (an ancient Slavic female name), because Zhiguli is very similar to Zhigalo.
This video and the comments have taught me so much. I’m mostly familiar with the Lada brand from all of those Russian dashcam videos. Those cars seem to be the Nissan Altima of Russia. Big Lada Energy
I’d love to see more about that Aurus brand… I was getting the same vibes as you (a Chrysler 300 with a Rolls-Royce grille).
Keep up the great work, good Sir 😌🙌❤️
You forgot the SMZ "Invalid Car" Comrade Ed
@Hello Bob how are you doing?
An old Lada will outlive you and probably your grandkids. 😂
And I’d love one of those big old Zis or a Zil limousines! Might need some modification of course.
"...meaning "Freedom"!"
Nice fact-checking from the very start!
"We won't recommend videos from this channel to you again"
Just nice!
Ed, you forgot the most laughed at car in America from the old Soviet Union satellite country of Yugoslavia that was imported by the United States, and that car was the infamous Yugo!
This car was the epitome of old Soviet styling and luxury and quality (not).
It was the but of jokes, particularly here in Michigan.
With a $3000 price tag, which was cheap even by 1980s economic standards, you could be the proud owner of a Yugo.
But this is no laughing matter. The Yugo's weight was so light that one them was crossing the Mackinaw Bridge when a gust of wind blew the car over the side, with it's driver and plunged 250 feet into the Straits of Mackinaw (true story).
The Yugo had such a low safety rating that it almost didn't meet the American minimum safety standards for imported vehicles, and ever single automotive review of the Yugo advised buyers to steer clear of the Yugo.
At 16:32 really took me. Reagan and you has saved a Soviet citizen and now UA-cam is subscribed on you!