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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

#51

Post by encabulator »

grishka wrote: post #36

Meanwhile, in the USSR itself, if you wanted a car, thanks to the planned economy, you couldn't just go and buy one. There was a queue you had to register in and wait for months, maybe years. The quality was crap. The cars came out of the factory essentially unfinished — you had to take your new car to a workshop to have an anti-corrosion coating applied for example.

Yes, one of the paradoxes of Soviet Union was that used cars were more expensive than new cars, at least in the 80s. That was exactly because of the sales restrictions. You needed a special permit for a new car. These were usually distributed by trade union, in quantities like 1 permit per year per your_workplace. Used cars, however, were sold on "free market".

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#52

Post by eptcyka »

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…

It would’ve been great if it was a 1:1 copy, but the soviets made the design cheaper to produce and less reliable.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#53

Post by encabulator »

okaleniuk wrote: post #38
grishka wrote: post #36

Meanwhile, in the USSR itself, if you wanted a car, thanks to the planned economy, you couldn't just go and buy one. There was a queue you had to register in and wait for months, maybe years. The quality was crap. The cars came out of the factory essentially unfinished — you had to take your new car to a workshop to have an anti-corrosion coating applied for example.

Fun fact, there were no commercials in the USSR. No TV advertisements as a genre, so nobody knew how to make these. And one of the first Soviet commercials I saw was already during perestroyka, and it was about Lada. It was 15 minutes long, and it featured a line (sorry, may be misremembering it a bit) "if your brand new car doesn't start, no worries! Just take a 10mm wrench, and tighten the battery bolts. See how ea…

> Fun fact, there were no commercials in the USSR.

Actually there were, at least in some parts of USSR. Search youtube for "Harry Egipt" for some fun examples.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#54

Post by ACCount37 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #49
ACCount37 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

EVs are on the roads right now, and most of them don't require oil changes at all. The oil in sealed in the gearbox, with no combustion to foul it, and is rated for the lifetime of the entire car.

And, have you ever seen a user? Like, an actual user, in person? 1 user in 5 is capable of swapping out toner cartridges. Kicking the can to the tech support dept (for oil changes: to the service shops) is how it's done in real life.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#55

Post by jojobas »

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…

Some 45% of current Americans around 25 years old hold an Associate degree or above.

Looks like you're telling us that US college is on par with changing car oil.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#56

Post by potato3732842 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #54
potato3732842 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

EVs are on the roads right now, and most of them don't require oil changes at all. The oil in sealed in the gearbox, with no combustion to foul it, and is rated for the lifetime of the entire car. And, have you ever seen a user? Like, an actual user, in person? 1 user in 5 is capable of swapping out toner cartridges. Kicking the can to the tech support dept (for oil changes: to the service shops) is how it's done in…

>EVs are on the roads right now, and most of them don't require oil changes at all. The oil in sealed in the gearbox, with no combustion to foul it, and is rated for the lifetime of the entire car.

You're being misleading. Nobody is changing the comparable oils in their ICE car with any serious regularity either. When people talk about oil changes they're talking about motor oil.

>And, have you ever seen a user? Like, an actual user, in person? 1 user in 5 is capable of swapping out toner cartridges.

99/10 can probably read the instructions and do it themselves if they care to try.

>Kicking the can to the tech support dept (for oil changes: to the service shops) is how it's done in real life.

Yes, that's how it's done in the office where you have people who's job it is to do those things. Are you incapable of emptying your trash can because the janitor does it? Even the most useless people living within the highest touch HOAs are changing their own printer ink and cleaning out the garbage collector in their dishwasher and the filter in their HVAC. There's no reason the basic stuff on a car couldn't be on that level of complexity.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#57

Post by jojobas »

okaleniuk wrote: post #30

The Fiat 124 was actually a pretty good car for its era. Russians improved its suspension, refitted the engine, and messed up the hydraulics. Still, pretty good car for the 60s. And then, they continued to produce the same car with miniscule modifications until 2010s. That's the problem with authoritarian regimes. You can buy a plant by a fiat (pun intended), but you can't make a decent car by a decree.

They could have done much better if it was a priority. The priority however was tanks, nuclear submarines and missiles. Up to 25% of GDP was outright wasted on the military.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#58

Post by jojobas »

okaleniuk wrote: post #38
grishka wrote: post #36

Meanwhile, in the USSR itself, if you wanted a car, thanks to the planned economy, you couldn't just go and buy one. There was a queue you had to register in and wait for months, maybe years. The quality was crap. The cars came out of the factory essentially unfinished — you had to take your new car to a workshop to have an anti-corrosion coating applied for example.

Fun fact, there were no commercials in the USSR. No TV advertisements as a genre, so nobody knew how to make these. And one of the first Soviet commercials I saw was already during perestroyka, and it was about Lada. It was 15 minutes long, and it featured a line (sorry, may be misremembering it a bit) "if your brand new car doesn't start, no worries! Just take a 10mm wrench, and tighten the battery bolts. See how ea…

There actually were commercials and they were ridiculous.

"Demand in your local store". If you tried to demand something from the demigods of soviet trades you'd be laughed out of the neighborhood.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#59

Post by ACCount37 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #56
ACCount37 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are on the roads right now, and most of them don't require oil changes at all. The oil in sealed in the gearbox, with no combustion to foul it, and is rated for the lifetime of the entire car. And, have you ever seen a user? Like, an actual user, in person? 1 user in 5 is capable of swapping out toner cartridges. Kicking the can to the tech support dept (for oil changes: to the service shops) is how it's done in…

>EVs are on the roads right now, and most of them don't require oil changes at all. The oil in sealed in the gearbox, with no combustion to foul it, and is rated for the lifetime of the entire car. You're being misleading. Nobody is changing the comparable oils in their ICE car with any serious regularity either. When people talk about oil changes they're talking about motor oil. >And, have you ever seen a user? Like…

> if they care to try

You need to have that "if" reviewed by a regulatory body - with how much load you make it bear.

The issue isn't that 99 users out of 100 are actually retarded and incapable of doing a thing. The issue is that they don't want to. And wouldn't want to. And you would need multiple generational leaps in mind control technology to change that at scale.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#60

Post by chupasaurus »

jojobas wrote: post #57
okaleniuk wrote: post #30

The Fiat 124 was actually a pretty good car for its era. Russians improved its suspension, refitted the engine, and messed up the hydraulics. Still, pretty good car for the 60s. And then, they continued to produce the same car with miniscule modifications until 2010s. That's the problem with authoritarian regimes. You can buy a plant by a fiat (pun intended), but you can't make a decent car by a decree.

They could have done much better if it was a priority. The priority however was tanks, nuclear submarines and missiles. Up to 25% of GDP was outright wasted on the military.

Considering reliability and quality of those tanks and missile platforms - it wouldn't be better.
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