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Uhhh… anyone who has ever driving in a Lada or a Niva can tell you they were not well-engineered machines. Quite the opposite! Yes, it was possible to fix on

Uhhh… anyone who has ever driving in a Lada or a Niva can tell you they were not well-engineered machines. Quite the opposite! Yes, it was possible to fix one with a hammer because well into the 1990’s they had barely any electronic components, but sit in one before you believe the truly bizarre take of this article. Soviet consumer goods were _famously_ shitty. I don’t know what this writer is smoking. Not Soviet cigarettes for sure, since those also sucked.

alexellisuk 5y ago
I thought this article was interesting and in keeping with what I've seen posted on Hacker News. Do we know why it was flagged without comment after being upvoted?
- simonblack 5y ago
  Russophobia? The group-think is "Russia = bad".
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
They were well engineered for the purpose of being a cheap car that could be easily maintained and kept ready with the state of infrastructure and supply chains in the 1970s USSR. It's no 2010s Mercedes Central planning crap can make great products for very, very narrow definition of "fine" that sometimes just so happens to line up with what someone needs. It's really crap at figuring out what to make or what combination of subjective attributes make for a thing people want. The author is definitively smoking soviet paint factory fumes though.
- drran 5y ago
  > They were well engineered for the purpose of being a cheap car Yep. > that could be easily maintained and kept ready with the state of infrastructure and supply chains in the 1970s USSR. Which chains? Even gas was hard (impossible) to buy by a civilian without «blat».
- huitzitziltzin 5y ago
  But they didn’t even do the engineering work, right? The design was a copy of a 1960’s Fiat which was then never updated for 40 years. This wasn’t a deliberate, careful choice by Gosplan to pick a car that would work well given the primitive state of the Soviet economy. Those crappy rust buckets were the best design that they could buy and implement from someone else. There is occasionally weird nostalgia (or something like it) for certain aspects of the Soviet period and I do not get it at all!
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They knew they weren't good at figuring out what balance of attributes complex things needed so they copied. It wasn't their first rodeo when it came to copying something "with design allowances for local reality". Way easier to copy and alter a Fiat than trust a committee to plan a car that is a hit. I'm not well versed on the Fiat they copied but knowing how these things usually go I can see where they'd have made changes to fit their situation (e.g. revising trivial things to use off she shelf parts already known to be available in high volume, like the soviet equivalent of spec'ing a roller blade bearing instead an odd bearing). There are a lot of cars of that era that are like the Lada in terms of features (or lack thereof), specs, ownership experience, etc. I don't think it's anything particularly specific about the Lada that makes people like it though certainly there's some things about it that makes people with a certain worldview want to like it more than they would otherwise. I think people are nostalgic for it because it was so prolific and well cared for (or at least they were maintained) because cars weren't treated as disposable by the people who had Ladas so that makes them easy to come by and keep using today. Basically it was a decent car that got lucky in terms of when and where it existed and who it was sold to that run into a lot of staying power.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  > easily maintained the best maintenance is no maintenance these cars required 10x more work than counterparts from abroad
dzhiurgis 5y ago
I second this. You'd check your oil when driving to next town 50km away and if you decide to drive to country nearby you'd have to spend few weeks hardening everything. Imagine Japanese cars from the period. You'd drive for 20kkm without oil change and will be sure it will start next morning at -20C.
me_me_me 5y ago
One positive that they had was no incentives for planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence 'feature' is a terrible tragedy of commons in capitalism that turns the world into waste machine. Also one thing to remember is the sense of style was bit off at that time anyway. Just look what people were wearing up to 90's. Combined with spirit of utilitarianism and brutalism you get, 'ugly' products.

alexellisuk 5y ago

I thought this article was interesting and in keeping with what I've seen posted on Hacker News. Do we know why it was flagged without comment after being upvoted?

simonblack 5y ago
Russophobia? The group-think is "Russia = bad".

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

They were well engineered for the purpose of being a cheap car that could be easily maintained and kept ready with the state of infrastructure and supply chains in the 1970s USSR. It's no 2010s Mercedes Central planning crap can make great products for very, very narrow definition of "fine" that sometimes just so happens to line up with what someone needs. It's really crap at figuring out what to make or what combination of subjective attributes make for a thing people want. The author is definitively smoking soviet paint factory fumes though.

drran 5y ago
> They were well engineered for the purpose of being a cheap car Yep. > that could be easily maintained and kept ready with the state of infrastructure and supply chains in the 1970s USSR. Which chains? Even gas was hard (impossible) to buy by a civilian without «blat».
huitzitziltzin 5y ago
But they didn’t even do the engineering work, right? The design was a copy of a 1960’s Fiat which was then never updated for 40 years. This wasn’t a deliberate, careful choice by Gosplan to pick a car that would work well given the primitive state of the Soviet economy. Those crappy rust buckets were the best design that they could buy and implement from someone else. There is occasionally weird nostalgia (or something like it) for certain aspects of the Soviet period and I do not get it at all!
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They knew they weren't good at figuring out what balance of attributes complex things needed so they copied. It wasn't their first rodeo when it came to copying something "with design allowances for local reality". Way easier to copy and alter a Fiat than trust a committee to plan a car that is a hit. I'm not well versed on the Fiat they copied but knowing how these things usually go I can see where they'd have made changes to fit their situation (e.g. revising trivial things to use off she shelf parts already known to be available in high volume, like the soviet equivalent of spec'ing a roller blade bearing instead an odd bearing). There are a lot of cars of that era that are like the Lada in terms of features (or lack thereof), specs, ownership experience, etc. I don't think it's anything particularly specific about the Lada that makes people like it though certainly there's some things about it that makes people with a certain worldview want to like it more than they would otherwise. I think people are nostalgic for it because it was so prolific and well cared for (or at least they were maintained) because cars weren't treated as disposable by the people who had Ladas so that makes them easy to come by and keep using today. Basically it was a decent car that got lucky in terms of when and where it existed and who it was sold to that run into a lot of staying power.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
> easily maintained the best maintenance is no maintenance these cars required 10x more work than counterparts from abroad

dzhiurgis 5y ago

I second this. You'd check your oil when driving to next town 50km away and if you decide to drive to country nearby you'd have to spend few weeks hardening everything. Imagine Japanese cars from the period. You'd drive for 20kkm without oil change and will be sure it will start next morning at -20C.

me_me_me 5y ago

One positive that they had was no incentives for planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence 'feature' is a terrible tragedy of commons in capitalism that turns the world into waste machine. Also one thing to remember is the sense of style was bit off at that time anyway. Just look what people were wearing up to 90's. Combined with spirit of utilitarianism and brutalism you get, 'ugly' products.