a car that weighs nearly 1000 pounds with an engine that was about as powerful as a riding lawnmower.
reminds me of the old joke...
"what do you call a lada on top of a hill?"
"a miracle."
Despite the jokes, the 80s ladas weren't so bad.
My dad had a second-hand one in the 90s (almost certainly from mid 80s) and it was a pretty solid car. There was a degree of simplicity to the maintenance that was uncharacteristic of other cars at the time. I don't recall it needing any major work doing to it at any point.
It also had windscreen wipers on the headlights which I recall a strange fascination with because at night the blades would cast moving shadows across the road.
When he sold it, it was snapped up quick for the Russian market.
However, the power of the electric lada in the article does sound more worthy of the old jokes.
It still seems pretty ambitious for the day and certainly surpasses my expectations on range.
My dad got my mum a Lada in the late 80's as it seemed a good deal ... that thing was horrendous and always breaking down.
Another joke from that time "Why do Lada's have heated rear windscreens? To keep your hands warm while you're pushing them"
My dad tinkered with cars and did everything himself. Maybe from a consumer point of view the car wasn't great, but then judging by the comprehensiveness of the toolkit that came with the car it perhaps wasn't aimed at the average consumer.
I have since heard from other sources that the electrics could vary between perfect and terrible in Ladas, and that the bodies could be prone to rust. But both things were not uncommon with more mainstream cars of the time. I think the main problem my dad had was getting hold of parts in the UK.
> Another joke from that time "Why do Lada's have heated rear windscreens? To keep your hands warm while you're pushing them"
I remember many of those jokes being interchangeable with Lada and Skoda. Incidentally, my dad's next car was a Skoda Favorit. I'm not sure the jokes were really relevant there.
It is quite interesting how Skoda now enjoys one of the better reputations of brands under the VW group.
Came w toolkit, sounds like a gamer's overclocking PC!
Since very few Ladas were ever driven in California, and very few Chevys in Russia it's hard to be fair. They are both the products of local conditions.
First lada, for instance, was not a "soviet" car. It was a product of FIAT. Ural Motorcycle was really a BMW creation etc. etc.
Henry Ford helped build some of the first Soviet cars (starting in 1929). By 1935, the Soviets had produced 100,000 Ford-designed vehicles.
Soviets often "borrowed" western product designs and presented them as miracles of soviet industry.
"According to official accounts, after lengthy discussion, the BMW R71 motorcycle was found to closely match the Red Army's requirements. Five units were covertly purchased through Swedish intermediaries. Soviet engineers in Moscow dismantled the five BMWs, reverse engineered the BMW design in every detail and made molds and dies to produce engines and gearboxes in Moscow."
Initially, while all the Italian equipment was operating within design tolerances, Italian expendables were used, and designs weren't tweaked, it wasn't terrible for what it was. But that did not last long, and quality went downhill.
To add insult to injury, Lada (or strictly speaking Zhiguli, Lada was the export name, and those were built slightly better) was a highest-end car a normal person could buy (after waiting in line for a few years, of course) without being "somebody".
The Lada was quite different[1], in particular it was heavier to cope with Soviet roads.
[1] https://jalopnik.com/the-first-lada-was-way-more-than-just-a...
I know all of that stories about FIAT. There's even anecdotes in Russia about the fact that they can't even copy Fiat without making a bucket with screw-nuts instead of a car.
Name of the factory where Lada is being produced: VAZ, locals call this car TAZ ("pelvis").
If they kept up with it, electric may have been quite standard by now. Of course, the US had electric cars almost a century before,which were abandoned, as well. And electric batteries are still nowhere near petrol by energy density.
It seems like a good experiment for the times.
> "a miracle."
Heh. My driving instructor who enjoyed soviet cars told us of a trick to get cars like that up the hill - turn around and go back up the hill using the reverse gear.
That Cortina also was a POS.
'Some' 1950's and 1960's American cars weren't POS. Everything else was. I don't think until the Japanese automakers efforts at world domination in the 1970's did you see high quality reliable ordinary cars.