Why Communists Sucked at Making Cars | WheelHouse

so a guy in soviet russia wants to buy a car he goes to the dealership the dealer's like hey so you know there's a 10-year waiting list on these things right like all right that's fine and you put some money down to buy it just before he leaves he asks the dealer hey uh should i pick this car up in the morning or afternoon it's 10 years away what does it matter well the plumber's coming in the morning we're used to competition every company wants to capitalize on the newest fastest and safest technology in order to appeal to us the consumers it's what drives innovation after all but what happens when that's not the case when a communist state owns all the companies is innovation stifled today we're going to talk about some of the most interesting cars to come out of the ussr and what it was like to get your hands on one from 1922 to 1990 the united soviet socialist republic or soviet union was a communist state that spanned 8.6 million square miles across northern asia in eastern europe the ussr was thick one of the first companies to be nationalized and start production of a purely soviet vehicle under the ussr's watchful eye was amo otherwise known as avto mobilenoid moscow [Laughter] [Music] we're keeping that in the moscow factory was a site of a stirring speech by vladimir lenin in which he promised the sons and daughters of the revolution that russia would now step into the motor age engineers from the scientific automobile and motor institute working for amo debuted the nami one in 1927 the first original soviet passenger car this rolling monument to the proletariat was designed to combine the simplicity and low cost of a cycle car with the passenger capacity and comfort of a small car it was considered an engineering success and did great on undeveloped roads but ultimately failed because of its high production cost only a few thousand of them were manufactured between 1927 and 1931. for the next 20 years the majority of vehicle production was focused on trucks and other military vehicles out of three plants the gorky automotive plant or gaz the amo plant in moscow zil and the yavasavi motor plant or yams yams manufacturing of all-wheel drive trucks continued through world war ii all in all 417 000 heavy trucks were produced in soviet russia car designs you many soviet car models were basically just communist copies of cars sold in other parts of the world the car's mechanics would be simplified and the brakes and suspension beefed up to survive harsh soviet roads brands like fiat ford and opel would get soviet makeovers and would be rebranded and sold under different names the first soviet compact car was no exception the kim-10 was based off a british ford model the prefect scientists from nami the same group that developed the nami one reverse engineered the prefect and converted the resulting drawings into the metric system so they could be adopted to soviet materials and production techniques the dinky little four cylinder had the three speed transmission and produced 30 horsepower but surprisingly the kim's performance wasn't that much different than its british counterpart and apparently it was actually pretty good for the time light years ahead of any other car being built in the ussr post-war ussr saw a massive expansion into the automotive sector moskvich meaning native of moscow acquired the entire opal manufacturing plant in germany after the nazi regime fell the factory located in the city of russellheim was a part of the post-war reparations paid out to the ussr by germany in 1947 they rolled out the moskvic 400 modeled after the opel cadet soviet soldiers captured a few opals and brought them back to the motherland they carefully reverse engineered every component on the car then built their own version of it in moscow the moskovich 400 had a 1.1 liter inline-four and came in a sedan convertible and even a wood paneled station wagon for when you're just hanging out with a comrade even though the 23 horsepower engine had a 0 to 60 time of 55 seconds the moskvich 400 was considered to be the best soviet car of the time and by 1952 a hundred thousand had been produced the ussr began exporting vehicles in the 1950s and production skyrocketed like leica the space dog who was cooked to death in space after catastrophic pod failure r.i.p to a real one by the late 50s 600 000 soviet cars were being manufactured annually and 43 different models were being exported to western europe you may know vazd by their export name lada back in the 70s a lot of cars were popular because they were reliable cheap and easy to fix the 2101 was designed with help from fiat and was a more rugged version of the fiat 124 sedan which had won 1967's european car of the year they added big drum brakes and raised the suspension to handle the poor roads a heavier steel body and a new motor with an overhead cam this thing was meant to withstand anything engineers took into mind the scarcity of auto repair shops when designing the car so everything was very basic and super easy to fix even the interior because there's nothing in it while it might have been easy to scoop up a soviet-made car in other parts of europe the process for obtaining one in the soviet union was a little bit lengthier during the cold war the average car weight in the ussr was 7 to 10 years much of this had to do with the scarcity of materials the soviet union prioritized manufacturing of military vehicles over civilian cars so once all there are 57 670 tanks were built they didn't have much material left over to build cars because of this only four and a half percent of people had a car if you compare that to the us during that same era that number is pretty low during this time in the ussr you couldn't just go to a dealership and buy a car it all went through your place of work trade unions under jurisdiction of the state decided how many cars each company got then the company decided which workers got a car but companies would only get a limited amount of cars each year real talk like four or five cars for 300 workers so if you wanted a car which most people did you had to jump through a lot of hoops to get your burly hard working hands on one first you'd submit a written request to your superiors stating why you wanted one then you'd wait around for a year while your background check was processed everything from your productivity at work to your attendance at state-sponsored social functions can i say communist parties were taken into account by your superiors so basically if you were a member of the communist party and an outstanding worker with a range of skills your chances of getting a car were better than just your average worker can you imagine if you're at your company's christmas party and you've been waiting like seven years for a car and then they called derrick from shipping's name and you're like what i've been waiting for seven years they're like yeah but derek stays late but there was a better option if you knew the right people say government officials or trade union leaders they might be able to get you your car sooner some officials were easily bribed but it usually meant tacking on an extra twenty percent to the car's value another car that was designed to be easy to maintain was the traubon 601 manufactured from 1963 to 1990 they made over 2.8 million of these blocky little guys the 601 was east germany's people's vehicle a reaction to the vw beetle and came in five different trim levels including a rally car and the hico mat designed for people who couldn't use their left leg kind of weird if you had a little bit more money to spend you could get a volga m21 this executive class car wasn't attainable by any old soviet you had to be well connected a kgb agent or yuri gagarin to drive it seriously this is the car that cosmonaut and first man in space yuri gagarin drove designer lev aramayov was inspired by american cars like the chevy bel air and ford mainline which is pretty apparent it was one of many soviet copycat cars that was borrowed from western car designs the m21 came standard with a cigarette lighter and radio which for the soviet union was basically the hilton you're gonna sleep in your car because your house doesn't have any of those things the base model had a 2.3 liter inline-four but if you're a kgb agent you got the secret sauce kgb and secret police got an upgraded volga with a 5.5 liter v8 which had 160 horses and could reach 110 miles an hour that's pretty fast for 1962. one car you didn't have to be rich or connected to a ford was the smz microcar but you did have to be disabled to drive it though these cars were distributed for free or at a massive discount to disabled people through the ussr's social welfare program nicknamed the motor wheelchair the smz had a single cylinder engine and had to be returned to the government after five years frankly with how bad it is to find parking in la i'd daily drive this thing for sure all these cars i've talked about might make you think that the communists only cared about practicality and longevity and you're right for the most part but there's always an exception that proves a rule and this one is called the melcoos rs-1000 built in east germany from 1969 to 79 the rs-1000 was one of the soviets only sports cars it had a lightweight fiberglass body and gold wing doors the milk coos got its power from a very unusual three-cylinder two-stroke engine making 103 horsepower that's not a lot but the car was super light think of it as a communist lotus elise that also sounds like a dirt bike [Music] the melkoost brand made a comeback in the late 2000s with their rs 2000 follow-up but unfortunately nobody bought one so so are cars produced in communist societies worse than cars produced in capitalist ones well i'd say yeah to a certain point innovation was definitely stifled under communist governments and many cars that were produced were just copies of other cars from other places but there were some really cool ones like the volga or the rs-1000 the only problem was that in a society seemingly devoid of classes only a certain higher ranking class had access to these cars which kind of defeats the point of communism we look at weird stuff in car history every week here on wheelhouse so hit that yellow subscribe button right there we talked about ford earlier so check out this episode of up to speed right here or this episode of wheelhouse follow me on instagram nolanjsykes and follow donut donut media be nice see you next time

Channel: Donut Media

Views: 2,549,300

Rating: 4.715745 out of 5

Keywords: ussr, cold war, communist, communist cars, Donut communist cars, communist car, ussr car history, soviet russia cars, soviet cars, did the communists make any good cars, russian car history, donut media communism, donut media communist car, wheelhouse communism, wheelhouse communist car

Id: ujyFF5b1ttA

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018