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When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

remembersingapore.org

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Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#41

Post by eloisant »

somenameforme wrote: post #21
lnsru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it’s worth mentioning that the repair shops as we know them today didn’t exist in the world of Soviet cars. So everybody was responsible for his car and the owners were forced to spent weekends under the car in garage blocks sharing tools, knowledge and beer.

The manuals for the Lada were epic. In a quick search for an original one I came upon this [1] which is an English version one, which is even better than what I was looking for! It describes the entire car's operation and mechanism in extensive detail along with descriptions of how to replace parts, what might go wrong, and more. I'm not sure that 'just send it to the repair shop' was an overall improvement in societ…

Why can't we have both?

Ability to self-service your car but repair shop if you don't have the skills, tools or don't want to do it yourself.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#43

Post by specproc »

usrnm wrote: post #20
janisorlovs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking an account “growing watermelons”: either Southern Ukraine or somewhere is Caucasus

Watermelons can actually be grown even in Siberia. They will be small and won't taste great, but many people do it just for fun.

Yeah, huge in Central Asia too

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#44

Post by prmoustache »

darkwater wrote: post #23
prmoustache wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Niva was actually a very modern car when it was released. I think it was one of the first unibodied AWD.

I'm not sure when the Niva was initially made but I have memories of rusted Nivas from the late 80s to early '90s already.

It was released in 1977 and afaik is still sold under the "niva legend" name in several countries while the "niva" name is also used for the rebranding of some GM based models.

It is not the car you'd want to commute on, or drive in highways but it is a super decent offroader. I'd probably choose the Suzuki Jimny over a brand new Niva Legend though.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#45

Post by xattt »

jojobas wrote: post #5
TowerTall wrote: post #3

We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly. It served my family well for many years, and for us, it was "sort of" rock solid. That a Lada was "rock solid" was in no way the norm. People were saying that we had a Wednesday model, meaning it was assembled on a Wednesday. The saying goes that the quality of cars built on Monday/Tuesday was impacted…

Export cars were made with some special care, for years buying a car destined for export was preferable to a brand new one built for domestic market, even if "scratch and dent". My father always carried a bunch of membranes for the fuel pump, a spare accessories belt, distributor, fuses and possibly something else. Every item in the list was a result of limping somewhere with a vague hope of finding the part in stock…

The Canadian export versions of the Lada full-size sedans had doors reinforced with beams for increased safety. So structurally, they were indeed built a little better.

There were several other features like western carburetors and emissions controls, but these were likely be a “temporary” improvement for the domestic market as those parts wear out and would likely be replaced with local parts.

The thing about JDMs is they tend to be more desirable than export versions, because of whatever quirkiness that gets left behind at the time of export.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#46

Post by expedition32 »

anthk wrote: post #19
optymizer wrote: post #6

We had a Lada Samara. It was considered a good car in the 90s. I have "fond" memories of helping my dad push the car to the nearest gas station whenever we ran out of gas - which was a few times a week, because we usually didn't have enough money to fill up the tank. Sometimes he'd drive me most of the way to school, the car would run out of gas, and then I'd walk the rest of the way. He'd then figure out a way to ge…

Spaniard here. My dad owned a Lada Samara too; but infinitely tweaked in order to fit the standards on security from Spain in the 90's. It couldn't compete with most of the cars made form the West in the 90's (especially on acceleration and top speeds) but it worked without many issues over 20 years. Yes, upon entering the cars of my friends' relatives it often was like entering an F16 because of how smoothly their h…

In the Netherlands the East German Trabant was a fairly populair hipster car in the 1960s and 70s. East Germans were considered the good Germans.

Dutch customers ofcourse paid in hard currency that the DDR desperately needed so they were quite happy to export them.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#47

Post by xattt »

somenameforme wrote: post #21
lnsru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it’s worth mentioning that the repair shops as we know them today didn’t exist in the world of Soviet cars. So everybody was responsible for his car and the owners were forced to spent weekends under the car in garage blocks sharing tools, knowledge and beer.

The manuals for the Lada were epic. In a quick search for an original one I came upon this [1] which is an English version one, which is even better than what I was looking for! It describes the entire car's operation and mechanism in extensive detail along with descriptions of how to replace parts, what might go wrong, and more. I'm not sure that 'just send it to the repair shop' was an overall improvement in societ…

You’re looking at a repair manual, which would be expected to describe operation and function in detail. These are available for all cars if you know who to ask.

I recall looking through owner’s manual for a domestic VAZ 2101. It was standard stuff, but certainly didn’t go into detail about knolling your car.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#48

Post by phatfish »

somenameforme wrote: post #21
lnsru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it’s worth mentioning that the repair shops as we know them today didn’t exist in the world of Soviet cars. So everybody was responsible for his car and the owners were forced to spent weekends under the car in garage blocks sharing tools, knowledge and beer.

The manuals for the Lada were epic. In a quick search for an original one I came upon this [1] which is an English version one, which is even better than what I was looking for! It describes the entire car's operation and mechanism in extensive detail along with descriptions of how to replace parts, what might go wrong, and more. I'm not sure that 'just send it to the repair shop' was an overall improvement in societ…

My dad would always buy a "Hanyes" manual for our second hand cars in the UK, as inevitably there would be something to fix. These were comprehensive 3rd party manuals.

I have also gotten them for newer early 2000s cars. Never had to use one for my 06 Vauxhall though. Apart from some standard things that really need a repair shop (replacing the exhaust for example) I've never had an issue or breakdown.

The cars I see on the side of the motorway are always new, feels like there was a period before electronics really took over that most cars were pretty bulletproof.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#49

Post by potato3732842 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #35
somenameforme wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone can learn even the basics of car maintenance. Why do you think? Outside of extremely rare disabilities, I do not understand why you would believe this.

A lot of users have an extreme level of resistance to learning tech. Which applies even to the most simple of instruction-following operations. They aren't clinically retarded. They could learn those things if someone forced them to. But you, as a product developer, can't force them. It's utterly impractical to overcome that resistance for a mass market product. It's easier to make a car that doesn't require oil chan…

>It's easier to make a car that doesn't require oil changes than it is to make every car owner learn to perform oil changes.

No, it's not. There's fairly low level physics and chemistry reasons you can't make a car that doesn't need oil changes. Oil changes could be about as difficult as swapping out toner cartridges if they cared to make it that way though.

Please keep your Prius out of the left lane.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#50

Post by justincormack »

I remember getting a Volga taxi to the airport in Bulgaria in the 1990s. The taxi drivers wife sat with me in the back, passing around cigarettes. It turned out that every time it went round a corner it stalled so she was there to help restart it. Fortunately I was not in a hurry and there were not too many corners. I gave them a large tip in the hope they could buy a better taxi.
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