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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

#61

Post by jojobas »

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.

Scarcity wasn't the only reason, there was also poverty. A qualified engineer with 10 years of experience would need to save all his salary for a few years. Very few people could afford cars from their official salary.

The USSR was robbing people of the fruits of their labour to make stupid amounts of tanks, incite guerillas all over the world and build useless railroads to nowhere.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#62

Post by jojobas »

xattt wrote: post #45
jojobas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

There's no such thing as a Lada full-size sedan. The longest one was something like 4.15m long. Contemporary American "mid-size sedans" were over 5 meters long and even "compact sedans" were quite a bit bigger.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#64

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

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…

I wanted to cross a mountain in Uzbekistan by bike. As I found myself pushing my bike up a dry riverbed full of large stones, I thought, “Who the hell mapped this as a vehicle track on OpenStreetMap? No one could drive this”. And then I was twice passed by locals in some ancient Soviet-era vehicles that coped with the terrain just fine. I had to respect that tech, which could probably be repaired with simple tools.

Not sure what they were, though. LuAZ-1302? Liva Nivas? Simple Lada models (whether praise or mockery) are part of folklore in several countries outside the former USSR, but I feel like Soviet 4WD vehicles are talked about less internationally.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#65

Post by alexey-salmin »

It still makes me sad that Lada Niva is such a missed opportunity, basically world's first SUV with 4wd, unibody and coil spring independent suspension. The 2-door version looks good even.

Could have been a huge success if not for the quality and compromises in the engine/transmission.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#66

Post by tgv »

ACCount37 wrote: post #26
somenameforme wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Repair shops are a necessity. Not everyone can learn even the basics of car maintenance. There are a lot of drivers on the roads today who wouldn't be able to do even something as simple as top up the oil or change the tires. And actual repairs, even on older simpler cars, even with an exhaustive technical manual and modern learning aids like video tutorials or AR overlays? Fat fucking chance. There are ways around t…

I visited Rumania around the year 2000. I remember being surprised by the sight of a whole bunch of similar Dacias at the end of a (muddy) street, in various state of disrepair. The person we visited explained that people were repairing their cars by taking parts from other cars, as there were no spares, or they were very expensive (the average Rumanian was pretty poor at that time). And since nearly everyone drove a Dacia 1300 (tried to guess the model; they looked like a Renault 12), there were plenty of donor cars around, and people learned how to fix their cars from their neighbours.

That can't last forever, of course, but it shows there are other ways.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#67

Post by optymizer »

croisillon wrote: post #25
eru wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country was that in? I assume not in Singapore, because you'd probably have just taken public transport to school?

beautiful Moldova ;)

delicious food, tasty wine and reasonably priced dentists ;)

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#69

Post by postexitus »

For my parents' first car - they were between a Lada Samara and a (then recently re-designed by Bertone) Skoda Favorit. I was more of a Lada person, but one of their friends convinced them that Skoda is much better and they went along with it. I was upset for quite a while - but now looking back at it - although Lada had its appeal, I see that they made the right choice with their limited amount of money.

Re: When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

#70

Post by xattt »

jojobas wrote: post #62
xattt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

There's no such thing as a Lada full-size sedan. The longest one was something like 4.15m long. Contemporary American "mid-size sedans" were over 5 meters long and even "compact sedans" were quite a bit bigger.

My mistake, I meant the 2106/2107s that were sold in Canada. I am not sure if wagon variants were part of the lineup as well.

I said full-size to mean the “largest” RWD sedan offering to contrast with the 2121, 2108 and variants that were also sold in Canada. Make no mistake these cars were small compared to contemporary offerings.

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