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Subject: "Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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13076 posts
Dec-19-13, 01:27 PM (EST)
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"Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
 
   Zoner sent me a copy of a book called Cars of Eastern Europe, which is basically just what it says on the tin. It's a massive coffee table book in which the history of the former Warsaw Pact countries' automobile industries is examined with a scholarly bent and a great many pictures. It's by a chap called Andy Thompson and is a sequel to his earlier work, Cars of the Soviet Union, which is sadly out of print and thus being scalped for extortionate prices on Amazon now (last I checked they wanted upward of $300 for a copy*).

There are downsides; the binding is very crackly and I'm not sure how it will stand up to repeated readings, the text is all in a sans-serif font so that long passages are a bit hard to read, and it's not quite as funny as I was hoping. Plus, the (British) author has a very distinct axe to grind with the forces he holds responsible for that country's industrial decline and generally doesn't fail to get his digs in whenever possible, which is a bit distracting.

However, this is still a hugely entertaining book if you're interested in a) cars b) the socialist experiments of the 20th century c) vintage photos of either. It has lots of information on interesting side branches of European automotive history, such as Tatra (the Czech company Hitler and Porsche stole the Beetle from) and the always intriguing Yugoslav auto industry (Americans of a certain age may remember the USA's brief flirtation with the Zastava Koral, or as we knew it, the Yugo), as well as the giants of the socialist era (e.g., East Germany's immortal Trabant) and the interesting survivors like Škoda and Dacia. There are fascinating tidbits of history, too, such as the fact that there were briefly two BMW companies after the war, one in West Germany and one in East. Also, try to spot how many of the Eastern-bloc cars in the book are really Fiats!

Good times. The Belv from Warrior's Legacy is obviously not represented here, but many a one of its spiritual sisters is. (My mental image of the Belv is sort of a cross between a Trabbi, a Koral, and a Wartburg 311, with the cockeyed-but-virtually-indestructible construction of the first, the compact hatchback format of the second, and the styling sensibilities of the third.)

Also, I kind of weirdly want a Trabant now.

--G.
* Not, by far, the craziest OOP price I've seen on Amazon. They want more than a grand for the third volume of Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, I mean, what?!
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. Peter Eng Dec-19-13 1
  RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. jonathanlennox Dec-19-13 2
  RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. twipper Dec-20-13 3
     RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. Gryphonadmin Dec-20-13 4
         RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. McFortner Dec-20-13 5
         RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. ebony14 Dec-23-13 6
             RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. Gryphonadmin Dec-23-13 7
                 RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. The Traitor Dec-23-13 8
                     RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start. ebony14 Dec-24-13 9

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Peter Eng
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933 posts
Dec-19-13, 04:05 PM (EST)
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1. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #0
 
   > Not, by far, the craziest OOP price I've seen on Amazon. They
>want more than a grand for the third volume of Armored Fleet
>Dairugger XV, I mean, what?!

I read an article on this. It's something about automated pricing systems interacting with each other. Chris is selling a copy using a robo-pricer, and so is Pat, and the preset responses put the programs in a rising price war.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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jonathanlennox
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164 posts
Dec-19-13, 05:35 PM (EST)
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2. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #0
 
   >Also, I kind of weirdly want a Trabant now.

Why is the Trabant the quietest car in the world?

Because your knees cover your ears!


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twipper
Member since Jan-8-03
203 posts
Dec-20-13, 10:03 AM (EST)
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3. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #0
 
   *snip*
>and the always
>intriguing Yugoslav auto industry (Americans of a certain age may
>remember the USA's brief flirtation with the
>Zastava Koral, or as we
>knew it, the Yugo),
*end snip*

My father-in-law bought me a Yugo back in '97, I think, not long after I married his daughter. I'm still not sure if it was a gift or a punishment for some unnamed offense...

Amusingly, a car that was already 20 years old (and a Yugo...) when it came into my hands made a round-trip drive from eastern Kansas to Flagstaff without breaking down after I sold it to a neighbor.

Shocked the hell out of me.

Brian


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Gryphonadmin
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13076 posts
Dec-20-13, 02:20 PM (EST)
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4. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #3
 
   >Amusingly, a car that was already 20 years old (and a Yugo...) when it
>came into my hands made a round-trip drive from eastern Kansas to
>Flagstaff without breaking down after I sold it to a neighbor.
>
>Shocked the hell out of me.

I was once told, by someone who had had one in high school, that the Yugo was similar to some types of computer, in that a lot of them were hopeless right out of the box, but if you were lucky enough to get one of the ones that worked, it would last pretty much forever. That seems to have been a feature of many Communist-bloc cars, actually - that they tended to be poorly built but well-designed. Since they weren't developed with anything like fashion or planned obsolescence in mind, the idea was that once you'd waited your ten years for your Trabant, you'd never need another one.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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McFortner
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321 posts
Dec-20-13, 08:36 PM (EST)
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5. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #4
 
   It's that way with a lot of Communist made items. My Soviet FED and Zorki rangefinder cameras (originally based off of the Leica II line, but evolved over time) are well designed cameras, but a bit crude in the finishing. Once you get everything working within tolerances, they are great cameras. You just have to get past their poor assembly to make them shine.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".


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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
108 posts
Dec-23-13, 09:55 AM (EST)
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6. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #4
 
   >I was once told, by someone who had had one in high school, that the
>Yugo was similar to some types of computer, in that a lot of them were
>hopeless right out of the box, but if you were lucky enough to get one
>of the ones that worked, it would last pretty much forever. That
>seems to have been a feature of many Communist-bloc cars, actually -
>that they tended to be poorly built but well-designed. Since they
>weren't developed with anything like fashion or planned obsolescence
>in mind, the idea was that once you'd waited your ten years for your
>Trabant, you'd never need another one.

Interesting. I was told (by a Yugo owner) that they were pretty much designed to break down at 50,000 miles, to ensure people bought more of them. Which is, of course, a marvelous feat of engineering, if you could do that (you know, without rigging a bomb to the odometer or something), but less than likely. Though the aforementioned Yugo owner's Yugo did die somewhere around that range of total mileage. Make of that what you will.

I did think that it had a certain charm. The hood scoop amused me; it was as if the designers saw all those muscle cars, and thought, "Hey, we can do that!"

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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Gryphonadmin
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13076 posts
Dec-23-13, 11:36 AM (EST)
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7. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #6
 
   >Interesting. I was told (by a Yugo owner) that they were pretty much
>designed to break down at 50,000 miles, to ensure people bought more
>of them.

While I'm sure Malcolm Bricklin (the man primarily responsible for bringing the Yugo to America), being the sort of chap he is, would have liked that a lot, it doesn't fit with all the other evidence available about the Communist way of building automobiles. The people at Zastava were confounded by their American customers' demand for trim levels, for pity's sake, they were certainly not thinking up arcane ways of drumming up repeat business. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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The Traitor
Member since Feb-24-09
616 posts
Dec-23-13, 05:51 PM (EST)
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8. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #7
 
   I'd pass comment, but at around the same time, we were making the Wolseley Hornet and such things. I must confess a certain amount of fondness for the old Frogeyed Sprite. It's like the car equivalent of a kid running down a flight of stairs going "nyoom".

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

I toooooooooootally never did that. Nossir. Nuh-uh.


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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
108 posts
Dec-24-13, 08:37 AM (EST)
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9. "RE: Forward to Glorious Socialism! If it'll start."
In response to message #8
 
   >I'd pass comment, but at around the same time, we were making the
>Wolseley Hornet and such things. I must confess a certain amount of
>fondness for the old Frogeyed Sprite. It's like the car equivalent of
>a kid running down a flight of stairs going "nyoom".
>

That's a very Clarkson-esque assessment (in tone; I can't speak for accuracy). You should be proud. :)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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