We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly.
It served my family well for many years, and for us, it was "sort of" rock solid. That a Lada was "rock solid" was in no way the norm. People were saying that we had a Wednesday model, meaning it was assembled on a Wednesday.
The saying goes that the quality of cars built on Monday/Tuesday was impacted by the hangovers the workers had from all the vodka drinking during the weekend. For Thursday/Friday cars, the workers were already mentally gone on the weekend but on wednesdays the workers were fresh and motivated, and did their job proper.
We were lucky and that car took us kids on many road trips all across Europe. I remember that the car seat was covered in plastic, and on our first trip from cold Denmark to sunny Italy, we all got burn marks from the seats and had to stop buying some covers.
We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly.
It served my family well for many years, and for us, it was "sort of" rock solid. That a Lada was "rock solid" was in no way the norm. People were saying that we had a Wednesday model, meaning it was assembled on a Wednesday.
The saying goes that the quality of cars built on Monday/Tuesday was impacted by the hangovers the workers had from all the vodka drinking during the weekend. For Thursday/Friday cars, the workers were already mentally gone on the weekend but on wednesdays the workers were fresh and motivated, and did their job proper.
We were lucky and that car took us kids on many road trips all across Europe. I remember that the car seat was covered in plastic, and on our first trip from cold Denmark to sunny Italy, we all got burn marks from the seats and had to stop buying some covers.
Loved the Lada jokes. "How do you double a Lada's value? Fill up its tank" could apply to quite a few modern cars with terrible depreciation curves
The related Trabi (made of paper, some claim) have had their value multiplied
https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2024/03/27/trabb...