Automotive WI - Soviet / Eastern Bloc analogues to the Mini

[Masked Grizzly]

In OTL there were a number of Soviet / Eastern Bloc prototype small cars that never reached production as well as a few theoretical small car analogues to the Mini that never came to be, what if the following instead managed to reach production?

Lada (or VAZ) E1101 prototype aka Cheburashka (an early-70s project featuring a 50 hp 900cc engine with 4-speed gearbox that was capable of being enlarged to 55+ hp 1100cc as well as a length of 3.12m / 123-inches)

https://jalopnik.com/heres-the-cutest-soviet-car-youve-never-heard-of-1820213958

Tatra T604 LIDO (featuring a 22 hp 750cc or more specifically 736cc Flat-4 with 4-speed gearbox and a length of 145-inches)

https://jalopnik.com/a-car-you-never-heard-of-the-compact-tatra-that-wasnt-1746271166

Skoda Mini (featuring a 21 hp two-stroke 2-cylinder 350cc / 344cc engine from the Jawa 350, weight of 400kg and a length of 117-inches)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/skitmeister/9365004632

Polski Fiat 126p NP (essentially a Polish built Fiat 126 converted to front-wheel drive with some prototypes even featuring a hatchback bodystyle)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Polski_Fiat_126p_NP_-_BOSMAL.jpg

Polski Fiat / FSM Beskid (carried over the 594-704cc 2-cylinder engines from the Fiat 126 / Cinquecento, with another prototype using a 1116cc Fiat SOHC unit as opposed to the Fiat 100 Series engine. It is claimed that Renault largely appropriated the design for the original Renault Twingo.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSM_Beskid

Trabant P603 / Trabant P610 / Trabant P601 WE II (can be best described as a series of modern looking hatchback prototypes to replace the original Trabant, with the latter two and possibly even the former featuring 1100cc+ Skoda sourced four-stroke engines to replace the old two-stroke units. Part of a series of still-born Eastern Bloc plans for Trabant, Wartburg and Skoda to cooperate with each other. Some implausibly allege East Germany sold the designs of the Trabant P603 to Volkswagen and thus it, not DKW/NSU had a role in the creation of the original Volkswagen Golf.)

http://www.paul-wouters.nl/trabantschema.htm (Dutch link)


Fictional yet plausible ATL small cars from Eastern Bloc:

Zastava 850 (aka SEAT 133 to replace the earlier Fiat 600-based Zastava 750)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAT_133

Zastava / Yugo 900 (aka Autobianchi A112 - slotting below the Yugo Koral)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobianchi_A112

Dacia Lăstun (alternate Romanian-built Renault R2 as opposed to OTL car)

https://ranwhenparked.net/2012/08/28/a-look-at-the-renault-2-the-mini-fighter-that-never-was/

 

[ryhs]

Does Oka qualify?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_(automobile)

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Does Oka qualify?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_(automobile)

Technically it does given it appeared before the Cold War ended, however it was not exported to the West or other markets in OTL and on top of having to appear much earlier would have probably needed a larger 3-cylinder engine like an unrealised 40 hp 820cc 3-cylinder engine derived from the Samara engine (that theoretically could be enlarged to displace around 53-68 hp 1124-1176cc via the 71-90 hp 1499-1568cc Samara 4-cylinder engines. As for the Wankel engine am dismissing it entirely). - http://www.autosoviet.altervista.org/ENGLISH-automotorusse4(lada).htm

Envision the above prototypes and plausible ATL small cars in the Soviet / Eastern Bloc being exported to the West and other markets along with the Oka (provided the latter manages to appear much earlier).

As for the post-Cold War era, it seems Lada did look at two potential replacements for the Oka called the Lada Carat 1108 and Lada Oka-2 1121 though nothing became of either.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

As for the Soviets themselves it seems they were very interested in the front-wheel-drive designs coming from Fiat (via Autobianchi), Peugeot, Renault and BMC during the 1960s though the higher-ups at Fiat (and Dante Giacosa himself) persuaded the Soviets to opt for the rear-wheel drive Fiat 124 as the basis for the OTL Lada. Even in a scenario where Italy remains Fascist until the mid/late-1960s it is more likely the Soviets would opt for Peugeot or Renault instead of BMC to form the basis of the ATL Lada, even if it would be quite a sight seeing a simplified Soviet / Eastern Bloc Mini and 1100/1300 that like the later OTL MG Midget features Triumph OHV 4-cylinder derived engines.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Lada (or VAZ) 3E1101 prototype aka Ladoga (though outwardly resembling the later larger Lada Samara, this roughly Polo-sized mid-1970s Supermini prototype actually traces its genes back to the earlier and much smaller Cheburashka yet still carried over the 50 hp 900cc engine)

 

[Greg Grant]

Summary:
Short term: more Soviet citizens have the ability to drive cheap domestic cars
Intermediate term: Soviet humor develops an even richer lore about awful domestic cars
(sample joke: "Did you hear? Cheburashka now comes standard with a rear window defroster!"
-Good thinking. Now your hands can be warm when you're pushing it down the street.)
Long term: negligible

Longer story:
Any increase in almost affordable car production in the Soviet Union would be of benefit in making the dream of car ownership a reality to thousands of people. Much ink has been devoted to the hideousness of the Soviet regime, though judging by the posts on reddit, apparently not everyone seems to have gotten the message, but one almost always overlooked aspect is how the Soviet Union handled car ownership. Spoiler alert: badly, with awful corruption and idiocy.

To begin with, one could not simply buy a car. You had to sign-up for the right to acquire one through your place of employment. But before that, you had to get permission to even sign-up. This meant going around, hat in hand, head down, meek smile and get recommendations from your trade union fellows, local Party official, your supervisor, peers and get a "good characteristic" testifying to your worthiness as a productive worker and establishing "veteran" status - years of gainful employment. Once the permission was granted, your name was put on the waiting list. Please note, you were not requesting a given car - you were requesting permission to acquire a car, any car. You were not putting down, "Moskvitch!" You were just asking for whatever car becomes available.

Then you waited, for years. Always. The number of years varied depending on many, many, many factors. First and foremost was your place of employment. If you were working in a vital or important industry, or one considered chic at the moment, you were at times granted an easier and somewhat quicker passage. If you worked in a factory that made light-industry goods for example, and some terrible Party geriatric wheezed a speech through a session about how the Soviet people demand more light-industry goods, high-fives all around comrade, you might move up a bit faster, at the expense of others. Next, your years of employment.

Stability was a big Soviet thing. Someone who had years of consistent employment and was a known quantity and not liable to go off and do something anti-social and a proven track record of no anti-social behavior was going to get a spot quicker than someone else. Please note, I said "stability,"not "seniority." Sometimes they would mean the same thing, but if your last name ended in "berg" or "stein," it didn't matter how many years you worked in the factory, you being of the rootless cosmopolitan persuasion meant you were prone to fail the stability test, more often than not. Third, position and rank in the place of employment.

Soviet society was highly stratified, despite taking great pains at being portrayed as classless. If you were a factory supervisor (Russian word: "nachalnik" is technically translated as "chief"), then it was seen as more appropriate for a fellow of your rank and position to be worthy of a car than someone lower on the totem pole.

But let's say you waited out the five years (typical, by mid '80s) and your name is up. Now the hard part. First, your candidacy for car ownership must be confirmed by local Party committee, the trade union committee and your local work Party association. Of the three I just listed, the trade union was a rubber stamp and could not make or break you. The local Party association had bigger fish to fry, so they would not care one way or another, most of the time, unless you did something to get on their naughty list. It also varied greatly depending on where you lived. In some places, the local Party association was so large and so utterly disinterested in the meat and potatoes of every day life, your mere existence was not something they could be bothered to acknowledge, never mind intervene on an active basis. In other places, the Party was right on top of you and cared a great deal. As I said varied. Where most problems seems to take place, based on my anecdotal evidence and talking to various folks who lived through these things - the local work Party association. This is where ancient grudges were indulged, and any bigot with a pet hate and a moron with an axe to grind could sink you. The parable of why you don't need to cover a basket full of freshly caught crabs comes to mind.

But let us say you sailed clear through all this, drank with enough horrible people who hate your ethnicity but think "you're one of the good ones," smiled through the jokes of your idiot supervisor, bribed the maiden aunt secretaries of the factory director, made sure you got a sack of roast coffee to the Party official (or a folding umbrella if it was the early 1980s), and you got permission to buy a car. Congratulations! You were hoping for a Zhiguli, but got a Zaporozhets. Who cares! You now have the right to acquire a car and the car is available. Now comes the next round.

First, you need the actual money to pay for it. This is no mean feat. People would save for years and years to afford it, and still would need to borrow from friends and family. We're talking money most ordinary folks could not even see to spend.
Second, driving test - a special kind of Soviet Hell. I won't go into gory details, but suffice it to say it involves being berated, doing hours of assisted driving with petty and mean tyrants and performing vehicular Kama Sutra on a special car track bearing no semblance to reality of what you can ever encounter on the road under the baleful stare of sadistic bureaucrats. I once made the (drunken) mistake of talking about having to do a three-point turn on a small street in Los Angeles as a nervous fifteen year old to a roomful of (former) Soviet drivers. You know that scene in "Jaws" where Hooper and Quint are comparing scars from various encounters with dangerous animals, and landlubber Sheriff Brody almost makes the mistake of showing off his appendectomy scar to contribute to the chat, but thinks better of it? Yeah, well, I showed the Southern California Department of Motor Vehicles appendectomy scar. The looks I got.

So, anything which makes more cars available for more Soviet people and allows them to experience the freedom of the road and moving about is a plus in my book. But it still won't be easy and of course the cars will be terrible. And I don't see much long term change to the Soviet economy, or European history.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

So, anything which makes more cars available for more Soviet people and allows them to experience the freedom of the road and moving about is a plus in my book. But it still won't be easy and of course the cars will be terrible. And I don't see much long term change to the Soviet economy, or European history.

Aside from ATL Poland agreeing to accept Marshall Plan aid, only to be "redistributed" to the rest of the Eastern Bloc by the Soviets as punishment. Were there any other Eastern / Soviet Bloc "White Elephant" money-pit projects in which the cash could have been better spent developing their motor industry towards bring various prototypes into production, such as East Germany with the unbuilt Stendal Nuclear Power Plant?

Do any other examples exist in the Eastern / Soviet Bloc whether it be Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, etc?

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Another fictional example would be:

Skoda Shortcut (essentially a Skoda Favorit derived City Car that unlike the real-life concept of same name below, was powered by a petrol engine instead of a battery and unlike the image below featured better styling)

 

[Greg Grant]

Aside from ATL Poland agreeing to accept Marshall Plan aid, only to be "redistributed" to the rest of the Eastern Bloc by the Soviets as punishment. Were there any other Eastern / Soviet Bloc "White Elephant" money-pit projects in which the cash could have been better spent developing their motor industry towards bring various prototypes into production, such as East Germany with the unbuilt Stendal Nuclear Power Plant?

Do any other examples exist in the Eastern / Soviet Bloc whether it be Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, etc?

Oh I'm sure there were tons of it. The issue was not money though, but giving-a-shit. There were gobs and gobs of Soviet engineers with the training necessary to build a better car, but nobody thought it was necessary or desirable.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Oh I'm sure there were tons of it. The issue was not money though, but giving-a-shit. There were gobs and gobs of Soviet engineers with the training necessary to build a better car, but nobody thought it was necessary or desirable.

Had they been inclined would imagine ATL Eastern / Bloc Cars being much more competitive compared to OTL, though still inferior to Western Cars.

The likes of Tatra and Skoda probably would have fared much better in a scenario where post-war Czechoslovakia was divided between an ATL Western / Neutral Czech republic and a Eastern Bloc Slovakia, meanwhile Fiat themselves could have probably developed an ATL FWD Fiat 126 hatchback before the Polish themselves considered developing the Polski Fiat 126p NP.

As for the rest of the OTL or fictional ATL Soviet / Eastern Bloc challengers to the Mini, the Trabant proposals along with the fictional Zastava and Dacia models would have probably fared well in ATL.

On the VAZ/Lada's City Car / Supermini proposals, it seems the 1973 Honda N360/N600-like Lada 1101 and the Lada 3E1101 Ladoga prototypes were properly developed and fared better against Western rivals compared to the original Lada 1101 Cheburashka prototype when tested against Western equivalents. The Ladoga in particular could have slotted nicely in between the smaller Lada Oka and larger Lada Samara as well as been sold to Western markets in ATL, apparently there were also OTL plans for the Lada Oka to be sold in Western markets at one point.