also for VIN, it just says N/A or ОТСУТСТВУЕТ  Read more

Thanks for reading.

The key difference is financing. There wasn’t really a way to finance a car purchase in the USSR.  Read more

It’s large and circular but also rectangular. Does that make any sense?  Read more

Привет) Read more

Some guy in Saint Petersburg, Russia, who apparently is a big fan of Fidel Castro, did this:

The “you’re having the last day of your life” gaze really resonates with me. When I drove around in my Zaporozhets 968M a few summers ago, people gave me this part-amused, part-confused, but also heartbroken look. I could never put a finger on it, but now it makes sense. Yup, those people thought I was going to die. Read more

I think you should compromise. Do a powertrain swap between the Optima and ZJ.  Read more

Wow. That theft-recovered Jeep story is pretty wild. Maybe that car would have been the one shot up in the film, Brat 2. Read more

These are important questions, indeed.

Here’s a link to the car chase y2u.be/Z1LsuivJAR4 . In the earlier part of the scene it’s definitely a ZJ. But, perhaps, the director, Balabanov, used an XJ stunt double for the shoot-out part—though the Jeep still looks to me like a ZJ in this photo, even though it’s all exploded and shit. Read more

I stand corrected.  Read more

I should have mentioned Victor’s Lincoln—that car had such a mysterious appeal in the movie. Read more

I need to dig into the retired Police Interceptor scene in Russia. Read more

Thank you, Keith!  Read more

Nowadays, import duties would make this impossible. Importing 25 year old Ladas from Russia to the US on the other hand.... Read more

I never thought I’d want one. But now I do.  Read more

I’ve seen this Tahoe before! I never got an up-close look at it, though. I wonder if those are authentic US police decals. Read more

This one time when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and my from-birth obsession with shitty cars collided with the exploratory possibilities of Google Images and YouTube, I came across what I, then and now, considered to be the most awkward and ludicrously designed vehicle imaginable: the Soviet-Ukrainian 1984 ZAZ (Zaporo…