NATO return to Cold War force structure

[Ssnake]

The main selling point of the Lada Niva in Germany was that it was really cheap, and that it came with a humungous set of repair tools. Which, of course, you needed. It was respected as a no-frills offroader, when and if it worked.

[Perun]

My experianca is that Lada Niva is real offroader, I didnt encount of any serious mechanical breakdowns as people tend to write about it, it is wery reliable car

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, but compared to what?

In the UK, its contemporary to begin with would have been British Leyland. Compared to that it was probably perfectly fine. Compared to later Ford or Vauxhall cars in the 1980's, it was clearly deficient.

[TrustMe]

I remember when I was 17 a college friend bought a Lada. The engine always started up the first time in the winter.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Ah, but what about in the summer?

 

[bojan]

6 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

That isnt ENTIRELY accurate.

 

I was thinking about a fact that they did fulfil all regulations which was disputed by other posters.

Edited June 13, 2024 by bojan

[bojan]

3 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, but compared to what?

Compared to LR defenders* they were super reliable. Probably not as good Steyr Puch 4x4 (aka Mercedes G-Wagen), but we are talking about ~8-10 times price difference there.

*Those were widely used in ex-Yugoslavia police forces and got somewhat mixed reputation for being garage queens on one hand but very capable cross terrain on the other.

  

3 hours ago, TrustMe said:

I remember when I was 17 a college friend bought a Lada. The engine always started up the first time in the winter.

Original Ladas were Fiat license with reinforced suspension and improved engine starter.  

Edited June 13, 2024 by bojan

[Stuart Galbraith]

21 minutes ago, bojan said:

I was thinking about a fact that they did fulfil all regulations which was disputed by other posters.

Fair one, but then, so did British Leyland. These were not high standards.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 minutes ago, bojan said:

Compared to LR defenders* they were super reliable. Probably not as good Steyr Puch 4x4 (aka Mercedes G-Wagen), but we are talking about ~8-10 times price difference there.

*Those were widely used in ex-Yugoslavia police forces and got somewhat mixed reputation for being garage queens on one hand but very capable cross terrain on the other.

  

Original Ladas were Fiat license with reinforced suspension and improved engine starter.  

Landrovers are a mixed bag. A rich friend of my fathers called it a bag of shit, and he drove enough of them I suspect. OTOH, the SAS had the option of using any vehicle they liked, price no object, and picked defenders. But It is very notable the Australian SAS reengined theirs with Japanese engines though.

The best ones were probably series III and earlier. After that, it all got very plasticky. Discovery's and Rangerovers were even worse.

Sure, I think the Italians built the factory for them IIRC? For the 70's, there was nothing wrong with them. But you could see, particularly in the UK, truly mediocre construction giving way in the early 80s for better  imports. Nearly killed the car industry, but what was left, usually was a hell of a lot better built than what went before. Standards changed. Lada, and Skoda initially, to my mind were victims of that. What was easily acceptable 10 years before (and my father owned a MkIII cortina which regularly didnt start) suddenly didnt look so good anymore. Although yeah, on price, there wasnt much to compete with them.

[ink]

I'm not really a car guy, so I'm just relaying what my cousin told me (he drove a Niva for decades, until it finally succumbed to a duct-tape-covered death): the advantage wasn't that it was particularly reliable, it's that it was easy to fix with a bit of wire and a pair of pliers.

[Martineleca]

4 hours ago, bojan said:

Original Ladas were Fiat license with reinforced suspension and improved engine starter.  

The IDA-Opel co-production arrangement in Kikinda is a fine example of what can be achieved with a little pragmatism, while East Germany was still building "cars" made of cardboard with motorcycle engines Yugoslavia produced the grand Opel Omega A. My father got one after selling his Mercedes E123, frankly I liked the Opel more, partly because it was a bit newer, but it also rode better and had a more spacious interior I could jump around in as a kid, busted my head on the rear-view mirror once and walked into my dad's store covered in blood causing one lady customer to faint, good times. 

Edited June 13, 2024 by Martineleca

[Martineleca]

On 6/13/2024 at 4:38 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Standards changed. Lada, and Skoda initially, to my mind were victims of that. What was easily acceptable 10 years before suddenly didnt look so good anymore. Although yeah, on price, there wasnt much to compete with them.

Throughout the communist period Skoda was with whatever resources available striving to build cars quite distinct from what the Soviet Union was producing as a small act of defiance, it was the same with the other Czech automaker Tatra. Even before WW2 their air-cooled V8-powered T87 was among the best full-size cars on the continent, its lineage continued with the T600 culminating in the T613 that debuted in 1974 with an advanced double overhead camshaft injected engine making over 200hp. Sadly it was restricted for use only by government officials, industry executives and police, had it been cleared for export it certainly would have been competitive with the contemporary Ford Granada or Vauxhall Royale since we're talking about the UK market, but there's no way the Soviets would have permitted an opportunity for the defiant Czechs to shine internationally so soon after the Prague Spring. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

Throughout the communist period Skoda was with whatever resources available striving to build cars quite distinct from what the Soviet Union was producing as a small act of defiance, it was the same with the other Czech automaker Tatra. Even before WW2 their air-cooled V8-powered T87 was among the best full-size cars on the continent, its lineage continued with the T600 culminating in the T613 that debuted in 1974 with an advanced double overhead camshaft injected engine making over 200hp. Sadly it was restricted for use only by government officials, industry executives and police, had it been cleared for export it certainly would have been competitive with the contemporary Ford Granada or Vauxhall Royale since we're talking about the UK market, but there's no way the Soviets would have permitted an opportunity for the defiant Czechs to shine internationally so soon after the Prague Spring. 

Yes, I can believe that.

Just had a look, reminds me of a Austin Princess. Nice looking car.

Edited June 14, 2024 by Stuart Galbraith

[Roman Alymov]

On 6/13/2024 at 6:20 PM, ink said:

I'm not really a car guy, so I'm just relaying what my cousin told me (he drove a Niva for decades, until it finally succumbed to a duct-tape-covered death): the advantage wasn't that it was particularly reliable, it's that it was easy to fix with a bit of wire and a pair of pliers.

That is typical for most of Soviet cars for civil market: they were prone to small breakdowns (mostly due to poor quality of components, like electric parts or gaskets/fuel pump membranes/thermostats etc., but it was relatively easy to fix them with basic toolkit and basic handwork skills literally in the middle of the field. One must note that Soviet ideology for private cars was completely different from Western one: in USSR, private cars were considered to be the goods for hobby/leisure (even the word to call private car owners was "автопюбитель", literally "car fan") so they were massively overpriced (sale price was about x5 times of original production cost) and minor inperfections were not considered a problem.

[Roman Alymov]

On 6/13/2024 at 1:35 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Ah, but what about in the summer?

In summer, typical Lada problem was carburator overheating and, as result of thermostat problems, cooling liquid overheating.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Tbf, that is a problem BL group had with some cars (Particularly the Triumph Stag). Otoh, they weren't selling them 10 years later.

[Martineleca]

On 6/12/2024 at 12:50 PM, seahawk said:

The problem is not that they would not have been able to built more or better cars, the leaders simply decided that no better cars or larger number would be built. In a planned economy consumer demand does not shape production, political decision does.

Just like every other aspect of normal people's lives the commies found a way to politicise the automobile, to them a big powerful car with a large fuel tank that can go a thousand kilometers before needing to stop for fuel is a threat to their system. They are ideologically opposed to the proletariat owning more cars than the state apparatus can handle in a political emergency, let alone each family having two or even three as many do today.

[old_goat]

11 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

In summer, typical Lada problem was carburator overheating and, as result of thermostat problems, cooling liquid overheating.

Which model? And what year? 

My parents had two, a 2105 with 1.3 engine for a short time, then another 2105 with 1.5. We used that a lot, it was a damn good car, we loved it. I remember I was quite sad when we sold it. Never had any probelms with it. I think Ladas werent bad cars at all. I think it tells something about them that you can still see a few of them on the roads even today. Just about all cars from that age disappeared completely. Even western ones.

 

[urbanoid]

16 minutes ago, old_goat said:

Which model? And what year? 

My parents had two, a 2105 with 1.3 engine for a short time, then another 2105 with 1.5. We used that a lot, it was a damn good car, we loved it. I remember I was quite sad when we sold it. Never had any probelms with it. I think Ladas werent bad cars at all. I think it tells something about them that you can still see a few of them on the roads even today. Just about all cars from that age disappeared completely. Even western ones.

 

Except W124, far more of those than of 2 or 3 subsequent E-classes

[bojan]

1 hour ago, old_goat said:

...Just about all cars from that age disappeared completely. Even western ones.

You have not been to Bosnia and seen all Golf 1 and 2.

[Martineleca]

15 hours ago, urbanoid said:

Except W124, far more of those than of 2 or 3 subsequent E-classes

Well W210 had massive problems with rust which were largely resolved for the W211 with a 7-step anti corrosion treatment process, this generation received a lot of features from the S-class and except for some electrical gremlins the mechanical and interior elements are holding up nicely even on twenty year old examples, if they received regular maintenance of course. 

[Martineleca]

On 6/14/2024 at 10:49 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Just had a look, reminds me of a Austin Princess. Nice looking car.

The T613 has clearly drawn some inspiration from the Jaguar XJ Series I, especially with the larger outer and smaller inner headlamps, perhaps in some non-communist alternate timeline they even got around to introducing a V12! 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Kharkiv V2?

 

[Martineleca]

 

Russia should be renamed back to Muscovy, Ukraine insists

https://u-krane.com/russia-should-be-renamed-back-to-muscovy-ukraine-insists/?amp=1

- That's an interesting proposition, would serve to highlight the struggle of independence movements to free their nations from the iron grip of a single province in that vast empire.

[txtree99]