The 5 WEIRDEST Communist Cars Ever Made

how do you double the value of a communist car you feel the tank these five cars are so hilariously bad you have to take a look at the situation with a sense of humor people in soviet russia had to save 11 000 rubles which is a hundred and six 000 pounds today walk into a car dealership and pay up front only to hear that the delivery date was in 10 years time then when the car finally arrived it was comically bad poorly designed unreliable and many of them were pretty weird so why were the soviet russians so bad at making cars this is a new series of the scrap heaping where we talk about cars that are so bad they belong in the scrap heap straight from the factory but before we get to the worst five how did it get to a point where a car costs an absolute fortune and the wait time could be measured in decades rather than weeks well what we now know as russia was a strange place in the 60s and 70s it was under communist regime and the government placed a heavy priority on its military meaning all of the best scientists engineers designers machinery and materials all went straight into the country's war efforts rather than working on making good cars on top of this the production of cars was heavily regulated where the government held control of what cars were imported which were made who could buy one and how many cars were offered out but as we will see in this top five the cars were produced to be bare bones take you from a to b runabouts they weren't allowed to be luxurious in any way and they had to last for years and years so let's say you're a hard-working person in soviet russia and you have saved and saved for years to buy a car well actually getting the opportunity to buy one of these awful cars was really tough the government regulated the allocation of all cars where they would distribute a certain number of cars to each company then it was up to the bosses to choose who got one and even if you were employee of the month that wasn't enough companies put employees through interviews and only gave cars out to the hardest working and most valuable employees oh and being a member of the communist party certainly didn't hurt your chances of being chosen then after all that you placed your order for an insanely overpriced relic of a car and could weigh anywhere between four and ten years before it came but what this meant was that the demand was so high that the various soviet manufacturers didn't really need to innovate they kept on making hilariously out of date cars for decades and then even if they did want to improve or upgrade a model they had to run it by the government and as you can imagine this wasn't a quick process and here's where we get to our number five of the volga 24 and this car is not especially awful relative to many other russian cars but it sums up the communist car industry well look at this a 1975 volga 24 then look at these european cars from the very same year this vulgar was stuck in the 60s and showing no signs of changing it had a long wheelbase and very robust suspension for the awful russian roads but unsurprisingly no power steering driving this thing was a workout so much so that it was nicknamed the barge it was released in 1970 and was mostly untouched until 1977 where volga released an updated version the 2410. and you would have thought this would come with a modern redesign maybe things like power steering central locking or maybe even fuel injection all things that were commonplace everywhere else but no the government really weren't wanting better cars they just wanted more of them so what they did was further simplify production by essentially making the car worse they replaced the engines with cheaper versions that produce less power as well as replacing chrome trim with plastic all to streamline manufacturing there was one cool thing about this car though it could be specked with a 5.5 liter v8 not a good v8 but a v8 nonetheless but these versions were largely kept for soviet officials rather than the general public they got a 2.5 liter instead but to be honest this was a good thing because if you could afford to buy the car you often couldn't afford to put the fuel in it there were very few fuel stations where you could get hold of some outrageously overpriced fuel but naturally there was a black market for this petrol you just had to know the right people oh and not get caught and that situation explains and next car made with the sole purpose of being extremely cheap and good on petrol the hugo 45 it was a front-wheel drive front engine three-door hatchback made in yugoslavia another communist state and like many other communist cars it was based on a european model and then adapted for the communist market things like stronger suspension and swapping out parts for cheaper versions the hugo was based on the fiat 127 a car that was actually pretty good however the communists completely ruined it firstly it was made to be very very cheap only eight thousand dollars in today's money for a new car so there were lots of corners cut in the manufacturing process it was incredibly unreliable the interior was made from cheap plastic that loved to crack and the steering wheel was so wobbly that people said the car had a mind of its own it had a 1.1 liter four-cylinder engine that produced 55 horsepower which is actually enough for such a light car and they had so little rust treatment from the factory that they often got a bit lighter over their life but what was interesting was that for some bizarre reason the us imported them as a cheap base level car that sold well due to its low price only for it to be widely regarded as one of the worst cars ever it was incredibly unreliable and unsurprisingly the workforce that made the cars were mainly military the majority smoked while working and drank brandy on lunch breaks the materials were bought solely based on price rather than quality and the factories were absolutely filthy it's unsurprising that the list of common faults is so extensive and on to number three this thing is more of a tense than a car it's called the velorex whether it's velorex or velorex i'm not sure but it's actually pretty cool it's a clever if unusual answer to both the fuel shortage and the rising steel prices in communist czechoslovakia at the time it was made with a whole load of motorcycle parts including the engine which produced a mighty eight horsepower eight horsepower but the entire car weighed a tiny 290 kilograms thanks to its light space frame and that the body panels aren't really panels it was vinyl stretched over the frame now these were actually surprisingly popular as they were made as specialist cars for the disabled and so they were often heavily reduced or even given away for free the russians had an equivalent car and of course it was much worse it was called the smz and was technically a micro car and again was only popular because they were basically given away for free to those that the government deemed needed one and this explains why almost no effort went into the design or development with lots of people saying that they essentially scaled up a toy car to life-size they weighed 500 kilograms which is actually quite a lot for such a small car and only had a tiny 356 cc engine they were hopelessly slow maxing out at 34 miles per hour if the dodgy russian roads allowed that sort of speed or the engine didn't overheat they were made from 1974 all the way up to 1997 a time when we had the mini the difference in quality styling and space is obvious but the most striking thing is the design it's almost so bad that it's kind of cool so now on to and number one and what could be worse than the last iconic collection of cars well the trabant now these were mainly made in soviet east germany and it was an answer to the car of the people from west germany the volkswagen beetle but a sort of communist remix and therefore obviously worse launched in 1957 it was a four-seater that was strangely made from a material called duroplast made from recycled cotton waste it was kind of similar to fiberglass relatively light and strong but mainly chosen due to it not having the same cost or shortage as steel did it also came with the benefit of not rusting well whilst the shell didn't rust everything underneath it did but that's beside the point and for a long time it was one of the most source after cars in east germany essentially being the best of a bad bunch but it meant that the average wait time from order to delivery was 15 years to put that into perspective imagine having ordered a bmw 3 series 15 years ago that means that today an e 90 would have shown up still new but already dated it had a two-stroke 600cc engine that was reliable but well known for smoking a lot this was down to the two-stroke fuel separating after being parked for a while and the car mostly burning oil rather than fuel for a couple of minutes after startup it was very softly sprung for the bad roads but so much so that if you had passages in the back the nose would point up so far that you would have to adjust the headlights to be able to see they were made from 1957 all the way up to 1991 and were well known for how basic they were it was extremely loud and very very slow not to mention how chronically and reliable it was but it's not just that the trabant was awful in 1957 it was that it was essentially left untouched until 1991 where it was even more terrible you should watch this video where we unpack why new cars keep on failing the moose test thanks very much for watching this episode of the scrap heap you should subscribe to make sure you catch the next one in the series and check out those terrible cars cheers and i'll see you next time

Channel: OVERDRIVE

Views: 219,921

Keywords: Driven Media, Driver61, Scott Mansell, Driven, Cars, Automotive, Road Cars, New Cars, The Scrapheap, Russian Cars, Communist Cars, Worst Cars, Top 5, communist car, east germany, The Trabant, Trabant, SMZ, The Yugo, Yugo, Velorex, Russian Car Industry, Soviet Union, Soviet Cars, Awful Cars, Funny Cars, Weird Cars, Worst Car, Worst Car Ever, communist, russian car history, cold war

Id: R4iFUo20vEM

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021