oditot

what kind of ****'n car is this, Its got crazy drifts.

http://www.celtia.hu/ladaklub/egyeb/...lbk_emcsi1.wmv
http://www.celtia.hu/ladaklub/egyeb/...zaharaszti.wmv

Crit

iTrader: (6)

It's a russian Lada. Lada and Volga are GM and Ford to russians.

Aviator 902S

Yup. Except the Lada was an unreliable piece of **** with poor workmanship and very biodegradeable in the rust department. It's only saving grace is that it's not likely to be stolen from you, but then again that would probably be a good thing to have happen.

Stands to reason that this car has these characteristics too--- Russia bought the plans for the car from Fiat, manufacturers of some of the world's worst lemons. If it looks exactly like a mid-70s Fiat 128 sedan, that's because it IS.

Crit

iTrader: (6)

And Volga makes 1308CCs two-rotors with blank lands where 13B rotorhousings say "Licensed by NSU for MAZDA" and "13B". Russians suck.

Aviator 902S

But depending on the quality, it might be a good source for new rotor housings. If so, it would serve Mazda right for ***-raping us on prices of parts for all these years. Has anybody tried going this route?

Crit

iTrader: (6)

The quality should be on-par with Mazda. They had the same teething pains that Mazda did early on when trying to copy the nitride coatings and such, but Mazda finally went public with their coatings and carbon apex seals, and Volgas suddenly started to run right. Dimensionally, the russian stuff is identical. I'd do a search for russian car parts and see what you can find.

rotary emotions

Old Lada's (the FIAT-copies) ARE NOT unreliable, they're just ******' ugly and uncomfortable, but several russian owners did over 1.000.000 km in theirs! The engines are almost undestructable, and the cars are so simple they can be fixed easily (just try to work on a modern car, and you'll fall in love with older ones) by home-mecanics.
Later Lada made the Samara, which had a Porsche developed engine. It sucked majorly! The European ones would come to Belgium, be dissasambled, and rebuild, just to make them run a few months before you'd be at the dealer to get it fixed... Really awfull cars.

As for their Wankel engines: well, they just stole the design. So I guess the stuff could be ok, but then again, their materials could well be really worthless.

Aviator 902S

The Ladas (and Fiats) shipped to North America were abysmal, but engine life wasn't their problem. The issues here were poor quality electricals, relatively expensive parts and RUST. Our tougher emission laws (than Europe's) required more failure-prone components installed, so this didn't help either.

Coupled with the fact that they were inexpensive to buy and butt ugly (insuring rapid depreciation) most found it easier to discard these cars rather than fix them up. A good condition used Japanese car for the same price as a new Lada was actually the better way to go. With jokes abound about their cars' lack of reliability (FIAT = "Fix It Again, Tony") and the resulting plummeting sales, Fiat pulled out of the North American market over 20 years ago.

The fact that not many of these cars were sold here meant that the parts bins weren't as large as those for domestic and Japanese makes. Not only could you count on paying top dollar for said parts when (not if) they were needed, you could often count on long waiting periods for the parts to arrive and "service with a snarl" from the ***** behind the counter. ("Need brake pads? You poor bastard! Come on over here and bend over this barrel!")

I imagine these cars fared better in Europe, where they (and their components) were more plentiful. I'm not sure what the situation was in Russia, but I don't imagine many in that country were in a financial situation that would allow them to just buy a new car every five years. If I were that poor I might keep fixing up my car over and over again until it had 1,000,000 KM on it too. Hell, even the lowly Trabant sold in East Germany was forced to run long after it would have been junked in western Europe.

rotary emotions

yeah, but at least a Trabant never rusted

Aviator 902S

Nope. At least they got that part right.

rotary emotions

but when you ordered one, you could better have some time... just imagine a 10 YEAR delivery time!
btw, if somebody is intrested, the follow up for the Trabant 601 was meant to have a rotary engine. They had already developed some protypes, but it never happened as they finally joined the free world.
http://www.der-wankelmotor.de/Fahrze...veb-motor.html

Aviator 902S

And there are still people in this world who believe that communism is the way to go...