Budget/Eastern Bloc 80s cars
Discussion
A girl at school’s mum drove a polonez. Usually that kind of naff would attract derision but she was hot.
I went through a period early 20s of purposely buying s
t cars with a year’s mot. I coveted the Estelle but closest o got was a pre vw Kermit green skoda favorit. Never had working door locks (nor needed them as a guard against theft!).
I went through a period early 20s of purposely buying s
t cars with a year’s mot. I coveted the Estelle but closest o got was a pre vw Kermit green skoda favorit. Never had working door locks (nor needed them as a guard against theft!). quote=J4CKO
Zavasta, Fiat leftovers warmed over ?
Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Zastava.......Guess I should own up to having had one, my first car actually and got given it so shouldn't complain, it got me about. It was a 55A F reg, with a 5 speed box proudly displaying a '5 speed' sticker on the back. Like you say Fiat parts bin special so parts were easy, the 55 was a 1.1, i think the 45 was a 1.0, prob like the Uno 45 etc. The sunroof leaked and not just a little bit. I did eventually kill it. Handled OK, was surprisingly low, but was prob just sagging!
Edit, should add it was a Yugo
Zavasta, Fiat leftovers warmed over ?
Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Zastava.......Guess I should own up to having had one, my first car actually and got given it so shouldn't complain, it got me about. It was a 55A F reg, with a 5 speed box proudly displaying a '5 speed' sticker on the back. Like you say Fiat parts bin special so parts were easy, the 55 was a 1.1, i think the 45 was a 1.0, prob like the Uno 45 etc. The sunroof leaked and not just a little bit. I did eventually kill it. Handled OK, was surprisingly low, but was prob just sagging!
Edit, should add it was a Yugo
Edited by Retro.74 on Thursday 30th May 14:25
Edited by Retro.74 on Thursday 30th May 14:28
Retro.74 said:
Zavasta, Fiat leftovers warmed over ?
Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Guess I should own up to having had one, my first car actually and got given it so shouldn't complain, it got me about. It was a 55A F reg, with a 5 speed box proudly displaying a '5 speed' sticker on the back. Like you say Fiat parts bin special so parts were easy, the 55 was a 1.1, i think the 45 was a 1.0, prob like the Uno 45 etc. The sunroof leaked and not just a little bit. I did eventually kill it. Handled OK, was surprisingly low, but was prob just sagging!
45s and 55s were based on the old FIAT 127.Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Guess I should own up to having had one, my first car actually and got given it so shouldn't complain, it got me about. It was a 55A F reg, with a 5 speed box proudly displaying a '5 speed' sticker on the back. Like you say Fiat parts bin special so parts were easy, the 55 was a 1.1, i think the 45 was a 1.0, prob like the Uno 45 etc. The sunroof leaked and not just a little bit. I did eventually kill it. Handled OK, was surprisingly low, but was prob just sagging!
The Sana was their first in-house original, and wasn't too bad an effort, exports suddenly stopped when the country threw itself into civil war. More recently they've been building the FIAT 500L in that factory in Kragujevac, Serbia.
I've just remembered the late Soviet attempt to modernise the Lada brand, the Samara. Sold fairly well in the UK IIRC.
Doofus said:
J4CKO said:
Zavasta, Fiat leftovers warmed over ?
Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Zastava became Yugo.Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Doofus said:
J4CKO said:
Zavasta, Fiat leftovers warmed over ?
Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
Zastava became Yugo.Yugo, small hatchback, 45, Sana ? a 45 ? Featured in the Dan Ackroyd Film Dragnet as a plot device/punishment, not seen one for 25 years ?
May I humbly nominate VW...
They werent always the middle class icons that we have now.
I was born in 1970, Volkswagens as I grew up were weird, noisy things like Beetles, Variants and the bus things, I dont every remember them being cool back then, just odd.
Beetles were not that sought after in the seventies and eighties, until they started becoming classics, rather than just s
t old 40s relics, mainly the preserve of hippyish teachers at school, The lovely Miss Dent our history teacher had one, a "Jeans" edition with CND and flower stickers, if she didnt have this wilfully st car and maybe got an XR3i she may have stood a chance with me 
Then you had the bus type things, there was a family locally who had a bright orange one, I never saw it with less than 8 people in it. A mate at schools dad had one, it was toxic sludge green and smelt of vomit, due to his parents propensity for fostering troubled kids who tended to be lavish pukers. We used to grab a lift to school on occasion and we made his dad drop us off a couple of streets away as it was social death arriving in that heap, weird how kids nowadays get taken to their "prom" in them nowadays and get out, dressed to the nines, at the time, of things to be seen getting out the back of, it was second only to a sheep.
So VW had a similar vibe to these until the early eighties until the Golf, Polo etc became more numerous than the air cooled stuff.
See also, 2CV's, again back then you werent seen as a super cool Francophile, usually meant you spent time at Greenham Common, think Millie Tant from Viz.
To correct an earlier point, the first Hyundais were licence-built Ford Cortina Mk2s. The Pony was their own effort and, while suspiciously similar to a Cortina, the Stellar also featured a lot of Mitsubishi components. Like engine, gearbox etc.
As a left-field choice, may I propose the Chrysler Neon? Always conspicuously cheap and definitely distinctive in appearance, most lived a relatively short life as a taxi before vanishing into oblivion.
As a left-field choice, may I propose the Chrysler Neon? Always conspicuously cheap and definitely distinctive in appearance, most lived a relatively short life as a taxi before vanishing into oblivion.
MattsCar said:
Someone used to import Tatra 613s in to the UK. Probably the best Eastern Block car you could buy. V8, 220BHP, rear engined. They sold very few though over here, for reasons of cost and well, just look at it.
That would be Tim Bishop, ex-Jaguar engineer and champion of random Eastern bloc cars, particularly those with two-stroke engines. Sadly he never did sell many (if any) Tatras, mainly due to our predilection for Audis, BMWs and Benzes.shirt said:
A girl at school’s mum drove a polonez. Usually that kind of naff would attract derision but she was hot.
Back in the late 80's I had a school mate who's dad owned the local Alfa dealer, so my mate ended up with a tatty but glorious 1.5 Alfasud as his first car. All the boys at school thought he was the coolest man alive and we all envied his wheels. However the girls thought he was a pretentious show off and he didn't have much success. The Alfasud inevitably broke down so he replaced it with a part-ex-to-clear rusty Lada 1300 estate in 7 shades of white which the lads all mercilessly took the piss out of. However, the Lada somehow catapulted up his allure in the eyes of the girls and he got to see more action than Andy McNab. Dapster said:
Back in the late 80's I had a school mate who's dad owned the local Alfa dealer, so my mate ended up with a tatty but glorious 1.5 Alfasud as his first car. All the boys at school thought he was the coolest man alive and we all envied his wheels. However the girls thought he was a pretentious show off and he didn't have much success. The Alfasud inevitably broke down so he replaced it with a part-ex-to-clear rusty Lada 1300 estate in 7 shades of white which the lads all mercilessly took the piss out of. However, the Lada somehow catapulted up his allure in the eyes of the girls and he got to see more action than Andy McNab.
Never underestimate the aura of low-threat friendliness and odd self-confidence that an uncool car can project when every other sixth-form boy has some try-hard posing pouch supermini or warm hatch. At sixth form my beige+rust Series III Land Rover drew far more female attention and approval than anything else on four wheels. It was a 7-seater Station Wagon and on summer lunch breaks when I started driving it after passing my test could fill all six passenger seats (including the centre one in the front!) with girls who wanted a trip to the Burger King drive-thru down the road in it. Including ones who would not look at or talk to me otherwise (I.e. most of them).
One classmate who I was on good terms with and had some shared interests with - in my social circle but not exactly a close friend - went very frosty because he figured I didn't 'deserve' the attention; My car wasn't cool enough "and, more than that Chevrons, you're not making any moves on these girls. You're a t
t, Chevrons. That's what you are." sjabrown said:
It's funny how cars can rekindle memories. One of my primary teachers, Mrs Johnson, drove a red FSO Polonez.
Funnily enough the replacement alternator I got for my Peugeot 104 a couple of years ago was manufactured in Yugoslavia!
Same for my 2CV. Needed a new alternator three years ago and I ended up with a new-old stock item made by Iskra and with the case casting saying 'Made in Yugoslavia', even though the inspection/QC sticker was dated 1999. Presumably they never bothered changing the molds or tooling when they became Slovenian rather than Yugoslavian. Funnily enough the replacement alternator I got for my Peugeot 104 a couple of years ago was manufactured in Yugoslavia!
CivicDuties said:
We had the Lonsdale from Australia trying to undercut and out-spec Cortinas, Cavaliers etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdale_(car)
A Lonsdale is the holy grail of automotive shttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdale_(car)
te. There's another motoring forum where there have been efforts to locate even a single Lonsdale in any condition in the UK. The thread has been running for something like a decade. Despite all their sleuthing the conclusions so far are that an incredibly small number of the cars were sold in the UK, and based on number plates known to have been issued to Lonsdale cars, it's possible every single one was scrapped before 2000.Levin said:
A Lonsdale is the holy grail of automotive ste. There's another motoring forum where there have been efforts to locate even a single Lonsdale in any condition in the UK. The thread has been running for something like a decade. Despite all their sleuthing the conclusions so far are that an incredibly small number of the cars were sold in the UK, and based on number plates known to have been issued to Lonsdale cars, it's possible every single one was scrapped before 2000.
If memory serves, the Lonsdale idea was a (not very) cunning plan to circumvent the quotas on Japanese imports, by making them out to be Australian.te. There's another motoring forum where there have been efforts to locate even a single Lonsdale in any condition in the UK. The thread has been running for something like a decade. Despite all their sleuthing the conclusions so far are that an incredibly small number of the cars were sold in the UK, and based on number plates known to have been issued to Lonsdale cars, it's possible every single one was scrapped before 2000.As a student in the early 90's I've had a few rubbish Eastern Block cars.
Reasonably solid with predictable if dull handling. FSO seemed to be able to make their steering lifeless and heavy. I bought it from the car auction in Great Yarmouth (only an idiot would buy a car there) and bidding started at 50p. Eventually paid £485 for a 4 year old 28,000 mile car with full service history and no rust.
It was basically a 125P but with a heavier body and it felt like all that weight was in the roof. The car would move around on its back axle during fast corners. This felt horrible. The Polenez lost any of the Fiat style during construction. Worse still were the awful dealer applied stripes but a hairdryer got rid of them and more than one person referred to it as a Passat which at the time was a similarly ugly hatchback. Still a three year old 13,000 mile for £800 wasn't bad as a student. When I bought it there was no first gear, we found a local specialist who supplied and fitted a used box for £50. They asked my brother to time them and he recorded 12 minutes flat. It turned out they rallied Polonez and new them inside out.
Small, brown and growled. We called it the mouse (in reference to the Topolino). If you opened the sunroof without opening the back windows it took a chunk off the maximum speed, which was something like 65 when new. My brother tried to time the 0.60 on the Acle Straight in Norfolk; 7 miles of flat, straight road and he failed. This was still a lot of fun because it handled like a gokart and any overtake involved either slipstreaming or conservation of momentum so was a major achievement. On 1st August my other brother was driving it and through fast cornering overtook a brand new MR2. The driver promptly re-overtook him then slowed right down before wagging his finger and booting the Toyota for a swift departure
I'm not sure what was done to this though it had billet rocker arms, twin choke carb, sports exhaust, competition clutch. It was certainly a lot faster than a standard car (which felt very disappointing) and would happily rev to 8,000rpm and cruise at 6,000 revs (just over100mph) with correct ear protection. The steering was fantastic and the little orange car gripped really well on massive (for the time) 185 section Goodyear tyres. While I could certainly feel the weight in the back it was generally well behaved.
I remember once in Norwich accelerating from the traffic lights fairly smartly to hear tyre screeching next to me. Then in my rear view mirror I could see four completely aghast baseball caps in an XR3i with its wheels spinning. The fact there were four of them and one of me must have added about 200kg to the Ford and the lead footed driver had obviously smoked away from the lights making their acceleration even worse but I hadn't noticed them and wasn't trying. I can't remember if it was a 50 or 60 but the Estelle left the Escort cleanly behind. I've not driven a MK3 Escort but a colleague had a very tidy example, when I rode in it compared with the Skoda it felt very crude.
Driving it hard I did wreck the gearbox but other than that the Estelle was a brilliant car with a marginal electrical system.
FSO 125P
Reasonably solid with predictable if dull handling. FSO seemed to be able to make their steering lifeless and heavy. I bought it from the car auction in Great Yarmouth (only an idiot would buy a car there) and bidding started at 50p. Eventually paid £485 for a 4 year old 28,000 mile car with full service history and no rust.
FSO Polonez
It was basically a 125P but with a heavier body and it felt like all that weight was in the roof. The car would move around on its back axle during fast corners. This felt horrible. The Polenez lost any of the Fiat style during construction. Worse still were the awful dealer applied stripes but a hairdryer got rid of them and more than one person referred to it as a Passat which at the time was a similarly ugly hatchback. Still a three year old 13,000 mile for £800 wasn't bad as a student. When I bought it there was no first gear, we found a local specialist who supplied and fitted a used box for £50. They asked my brother to time them and he recorded 12 minutes flat. It turned out they rallied Polonez and new them inside out.
Fiat 126
Small, brown and growled. We called it the mouse (in reference to the Topolino). If you opened the sunroof without opening the back windows it took a chunk off the maximum speed, which was something like 65 when new. My brother tried to time the 0.60 on the Acle Straight in Norfolk; 7 miles of flat, straight road and he failed. This was still a lot of fun because it handled like a gokart and any overtake involved either slipstreaming or conservation of momentum so was a major achievement. On 1st August my other brother was driving it and through fast cornering overtook a brand new MR2. The driver promptly re-overtook him then slowed right down before wagging his finger and booting the Toyota for a swift departure
Skoda Estelle 120LSE
I'm not sure what was done to this though it had billet rocker arms, twin choke carb, sports exhaust, competition clutch. It was certainly a lot faster than a standard car (which felt very disappointing) and would happily rev to 8,000rpm and cruise at 6,000 revs (just over100mph) with correct ear protection. The steering was fantastic and the little orange car gripped really well on massive (for the time) 185 section Goodyear tyres. While I could certainly feel the weight in the back it was generally well behaved.
I remember once in Norwich accelerating from the traffic lights fairly smartly to hear tyre screeching next to me. Then in my rear view mirror I could see four completely aghast baseball caps in an XR3i with its wheels spinning. The fact there were four of them and one of me must have added about 200kg to the Ford and the lead footed driver had obviously smoked away from the lights making their acceleration even worse but I hadn't noticed them and wasn't trying. I can't remember if it was a 50 or 60 but the Estelle left the Escort cleanly behind. I've not driven a MK3 Escort but a colleague had a very tidy example, when I rode in it compared with the Skoda it felt very crude.
Driving it hard I did wreck the gearbox but other than that the Estelle was a brilliant car with a marginal electrical system.
A couple of stories of Eastern delights from my days in the trade.
Elderly lady buys a new Peugeot 205, on condition we take 2 part exchanges. The first was a lovely Rover 216 Vitesse, her late husband's pride and joy. The other, to be collected when I delivered the 205, was a Lada Niva. The drive home was going well, until I needed to brake for a junction, whereupon the car abruptly turned sharp left. It transpired that a brake pipe had burst, and we could never quite get the thing running right so it was sent to auction.
On another occasion, I take in a Dacia Duster - the original one, from the 80s, based on the ARO 10. Annoyingly, the only car left to go home in with tax and MoT, I'm forced to use it for the weekend. It was utterly forgettable in every area, except what I called at the time the "probable" gearbox, such was its vagueness.
Elderly lady buys a new Peugeot 205, on condition we take 2 part exchanges. The first was a lovely Rover 216 Vitesse, her late husband's pride and joy. The other, to be collected when I delivered the 205, was a Lada Niva. The drive home was going well, until I needed to brake for a junction, whereupon the car abruptly turned sharp left. It transpired that a brake pipe had burst, and we could never quite get the thing running right so it was sent to auction.
On another occasion, I take in a Dacia Duster - the original one, from the 80s, based on the ARO 10. Annoyingly, the only car left to go home in with tax and MoT, I'm forced to use it for the weekend. It was utterly forgettable in every area, except what I called at the time the "probable" gearbox, such was its vagueness.
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