Budget/Eastern Bloc 80s cars
Discussion
The Lada Niva thread got me thinking, there were a lot of Eastern Bloc cheapies back when I was a kid in the eighties, plus a few others, anyone have any experience, knowledge or memories of them ?
Few I remember,
FSO, was a Lada Lookalike from what I remember "Polonez". Bloke next door bought cream coloured one to replace a Jag XJS ! Had rust showeing through in 18 months.
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 ?
Skoda, Pre VW era, Autocar got rather over excited over the Rapid being a cut price 911, I remain sceptical. My cousin and I got reversed into by a very fat lady in an Estelle whilst waiting outside some shops in Wythenshawe once. Had a bloke come to view a car my dad was selling once in an Estelle, he got very arsey from what I remember, not sure why.
Obviously Lada, usually bought by blokes retiring and getting their first ever new car, lots of adverts for them at £3999 when anything worth having was say 7/8, came with headlamp washers, usually beige/brown/orange. Mostly shipped back to the Motherland by sketchy blokes in black leather jackets.
And other than the Eastern Block stuff, if you wanted a cheapy,
You Had
Protons, usually old Mitsubishis, reputedly not that bad in this company.
Hyundai Pony, Which I believe was a Cortina with different bodywork...
Daewoo, a bit later, initially re-animated Mk2 Astras and Cavaliers, later their own models, seem to have all but dissaperared.
And last but not least, the Reliant Robin, the three wheeler, typically sold to folk who only had a motorcycle license, obviously a downgrade from a car but meant you didnt have to redo your test at seventy and the missus didnt have to sit in a sidecar looking like Olive out of "On the Buses". Jasper Carrott made a career out of these, dont call them Robin Reliants, the owners get upset, doesnt matter, easy to get away from them to be fair
Any others ?
Few I remember,
FSO, was a Lada Lookalike from what I remember "Polonez". Bloke next door bought cream coloured one to replace a Jag XJS ! Had rust showeing through in 18 months.
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 ?
Skoda, Pre VW era, Autocar got rather over excited over the Rapid being a cut price 911, I remain sceptical. My cousin and I got reversed into by a very fat lady in an Estelle whilst waiting outside some shops in Wythenshawe once. Had a bloke come to view a car my dad was selling once in an Estelle, he got very arsey from what I remember, not sure why.
Obviously Lada, usually bought by blokes retiring and getting their first ever new car, lots of adverts for them at £3999 when anything worth having was say 7/8, came with headlamp washers, usually beige/brown/orange. Mostly shipped back to the Motherland by sketchy blokes in black leather jackets.
And other than the Eastern Block stuff, if you wanted a cheapy,
You Had
Protons, usually old Mitsubishis, reputedly not that bad in this company.
Hyundai Pony, Which I believe was a Cortina with different bodywork...
Daewoo, a bit later, initially re-animated Mk2 Astras and Cavaliers, later their own models, seem to have all but dissaperared.
And last but not least, the Reliant Robin, the three wheeler, typically sold to folk who only had a motorcycle license, obviously a downgrade from a car but meant you didnt have to redo your test at seventy and the missus didnt have to sit in a sidecar looking like Olive out of "On the Buses". Jasper Carrott made a career out of these, dont call them Robin Reliants, the owners get upset, doesnt matter, easy to get away from them to be fair
Any others ?
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.
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