AH Challenge: east block communist cars that are "good"

[NothingNow]

Nivas required maintenance and would sometimes break down. So would many much more expensive contemporary 4x4, except for Toyota Land Cruisers, wich would never break down, but were expensive.
Soviet cars were designed in the old fashioned way, requiring a lot of regular, but inexpensive and unspecialised care to keep working reliably, not like modern cars, that are designed to require care only at long intervals, but of the specialised and expensive variety.
I don't think we made a unbreakable cheap car in westhern Europe until the first Golf.

Eh, the Air-cooled VWs are pretty reliable beasts and can take some horrible abuse, as can some other older models.

But yeah, on any car from that period, you don't skip maintenance intervals, and you'd better give everything a once over on a weekly or monthly basis.
Do that and even a Trabi or Yugo will be a reliable, trouble-free car.

That said, if it's got Lucas electrics in it, or was a British Leyland design, it'll be a pain to work on (the combination of the two is pretty much a Mechanic's version of hell.) Meanwhile a Volkswagen or Volvo will just keep going.

 

[Æsir]

BTW, speaking of goulash communism, have you ever heard of the Puli ?

It's as cute and silly as its canine namesake :



Here's the belated electromobile version concept from 1991, the ridiculously/awesomely-named Puli Pinguin 4 :

And no one has tried or dared to create an indigenous passenger car in Hungary ever since...

Well, there is the Hungarian-styled F&M Vulca S... built by an Italian coachbuilder using BMW running gear, plus a few other weird supercar concepts like the Triango Revelation and Brokernet Silver Sting.

Hungary, though, was the only country in COMECON not allowed to build cars, which lead to a whole series of microcar projects, including a gull-wing doored, BMW Isetta-engined one coupe complete with fintails, and, to outdo the venerable Trabi, a resin body ingredients for which apparently included chicken feathers and pig blood.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Having an alternate successful BMC or Leyland sell the inferior designs of OTL cars like the Allegro, Marina/Ital and Princess/Ambassador to Communist countries (and maybe South America) like Fiat did with their obsolete cars (Lada, etc), that are than sold to North America in a similar manner to the Yugo would be a pretty funny scenario to contemplate.

Even though its all relative, the following stillborn variants for the Fiat 126 look rather interesting and if combined together due to some available money along with other mods (i.e 4-cylinder Fiat engines, 5-doors, etc) could have probably made it a pretty decent Eastern Bloc car. (Credit: AUTOSOVIET)

Fiat 126 Station-Wagon Prototype

A "Lengthened" Fiat 126 prototype

Even Fiat 126 prototypes that were converted to Front-Engined FWD hatchbacks!

 

[AdA]

If that spot was attended by the blind, then maybe.

Tatras are cool. They have steam punk design, that got bland with later generations, a cool spec (rear V8 engine) and are rare to the point of WTF is that.
Park one among a line of S Class Mercedes and see who draws more attention.

 

[ingemann]

The problem with east block cars was twofold, some of the cars (Skoda as example) was as good as the western equals (Fiat), the problem was that both these cars was low end products to the working class. It was what Chevrolet Spark is today, a useful car, but not something you brag about. It's hard to change that, because it was what the East Block needed.

Other cars was marvels completely perfect. The problem was that they were perfect for the state not the consumer. Trabant as example couldn't haven been better from the states POW, it used a minimum of imported materials, it was cheap to make, it needed little upkeep and while it had a terrible fuel economy per kilo, it's light weight meant that it used relative little gasolin.

 

[NothingNow]

Other cars was marvels completely perfect. The problem was that they were perfect for the state not the consumer. Trabant as example couldn't haven been better from the states POW, it used a minimum of imported materials, it was cheap to make, it needed little upkeep and while it had a terrible fuel economy per kilo, it's light weight meant that it used relative little gasolin.

Hell, the Trabi was also a really clever design for the period. Almost as clever as the 2CV, but not quite.

 

[Petike]

Hungary, though, was the only country in COMECON not allowed to build cars, which lead to a whole series of microcar projects, including a gull-wing doored, BMW Isetta-engined one coupe complete with fintails, and, to outdo the venerable Trabi, a resin body ingredients for which apparently included chicken feathers and pig blood.

That's hilariously awesome ! Thanks a ton for the article. I know little of Hungarian automanufacturing history outside of their legendary buses and some early cars built way back in the days of the monarchy.