In 71 I was in Kotor, Yugoslavia and watched Yugoslav made cars climb a mountainside so high that when looking down there was a blue tint to the air. Not one car had it's hood open at the top.
I recall the Lada and Yugo were sold here in New Zealand in the late 80s - the thing being is that there are still a few on the road 20 years after they stopped selling them here! A colleague had a Lada Riva - being in the car with 6 others was an experience...
I drove a six year old Lada 1300 SL in one of my sales jobs and for all it was a bit noisy at speed and dated to drive, it wasn't as bad as I thought and the five speed gearbox made motorways more bearable and it could do 35 mpg on the open road. Also it was surprisingly well equipped with a radio, velour seats, rev counter and clock.
Yugoslavia was not in the Warsaw pact but the founder of the Non-Aligned movement movement.But it is typical,that people from the UK and USA didnt know much about it,because their media focused more on the good vs.evil story.Yugoslavia had good relations with the west and east. bye
He refers to communist country's when he says "eastern block", Yogoslavia was a communist country. There were other socialist "republics" that were not in Warsaw Pact.
As a journalist I thank you for your insight. This is why I eventually want to teach journalism, to help get some of the polarization OUT of the story.
1:37: The Skoda Estelle wasn't a Renault design. The idea for a rear-engine design came from the Renault Dauphine along with one or two others, but the Estelle was an update of the previous 100S/110S. Which was a Skoda design. When it came to the Estelle they had a front-engine FWD design ready to enter production, but most of the finance was coming from Soviet Russia, and they said no because it would mean Czechoslovakia having a more advanced car than they did. But the body design remained, which is why it looks like the engine should be in the front.
The Yugo ceased to be an option during the war in Bosnia 92-95. I had a friend at the time who worked in the parts department at a Yugo dealer, and he said you couldn't get parts for love or money.
Dacia was only briefly imported into the UK in the 1980s, Mihai. But they did not sell many. But Dacia has had the last laugh as they are now back in Great Britain whereas Lada & Zastava are no longer sold here and FSO has gone!
+Mike Allmon Yugo is good car. In USA price was 3999USD, for that many it was more than good. Here in Serbia (ex yugoslavia) the price was 5000 german marks. I am driving yugo 45, my is 1990. Run good. And i wanna say that the YUGO GV, GVX, GVL, GV+ for US market was better maked than the rest...
takes me back to the 80s seeing this vid of eastern cars. i really like eastern cars and used to own a round headlamp lada estate car back in 89/90. my fave car is the lada riva estate. cant say i like fast cars like lambos and ferraris tho theyre well designed. the eastern cars have character. glad this vid shows how they were for posterity. thanx for posting it.
Yugoslavia (where Yugo comes from) wasnt "Eastern block country" as a matter of fact they had better relations with west , than with east . Also , the main idea behind Yugo was to make it so cheap that average worker could buy it for only one monthly pay . Also loans in Yugoslav banks had such low interest rates(1-2&) that due to inflation you would pay back less money than you have taken . Also most ZASTAVA cars made in Yugoslavia were built under FIAT licence so zhey were basiacly western cars . You can still sometimes see Yugo driving in ex-Yu countries .
average worker never could buy a new yugo in yugoslavia from montly pay. the lowest price it had was about 4000 DEM and that wasn't average anywhere in the world. it wasn't built under fiat licence, it was built on old fiat's underpinnings, there is a difference. you can see a lot of yugos in ex-yu even today, yes....
@classicczech Well that's because the Eastern Blocs used standardised parts. They were mass-produced in volume quantities in state-subsidised factories even when they are old-fashioned while a Vauxhall Astra MK 1 of Western Europe was only made for four years and their drivers find it more affordable to scrap them by saying "Too old to spend any more money on it." and when finding spare parts become an issue.
I recall that the Lada and rear-engined Skoda were popular in their home markets to the point where used examples from the UK were being exported back again....
@libed91 i also have two yugoslavian tractors; an IMT 549 De luxe and an IMT 533 De luxe and they both work great and i must say that yugoslavian machines are made very simple to use, are sturdy, have a great quality for their prices and are cheap and simple to repair (so that you can repair them at home without troubles)
Not too much difference between these and the cars that Americans were making in the 80s, their hideous over sizing was compensating for poor quality. The perfect car would have a reliable japanese engine, built by functional germans, with swedish safety features and styled by Italians.
I'm no fan of most of these Eastern bloc motors, but it's hardly an in-depth appreciation given here. And when he suggested a second hand Mk1 Astra as an alternative I nearly died laughing. My mother had a Lada 1500, which was frankly mediocre, but at least the brakes worked, unlike a cousin's Astra, and the dashboard of the Lada, for all its low quality plastics, didn't have the Astra's dashboard shimmy. The Vauxhall sounded as though a nest of mice behind the bulkhead was standard fitment. Assuming there still was a bulkhead there in fact - the Astra after a few short years on our salty winter roads was succumbing to the dreaded tinworm at a staggering rate. As for GM electrics of the period... well. Let's not go there.
These were good cars for 1986,but Britain's people always saying their car is the best. So typical. These cars still run on east European streets and they run pretty good.
Gotta say that I owned a 1990 FSO 1500 for a couple of years and I still praise it. It was reliable and comfy. Just try its rear seats, that's sth they don't make any more. And the way it handles... Basically you don't drive it, you sail through the asphalt.
Oh man, the Lada Riva. Thing was a tank. I remember a couple years back my older brother was driving it and we crashed into a Toyota Corolla right between the front wheel and the driver's door. His car was very badly damaged and the door didn't open, our car only had a slightly bent bumper that was later fixed with some hammering and a broken headlight. Used to be a very reliable car but now it breaks down every couple days. Also it was a great car for long journeys.
Yugo vas the fastest sold car in U.S.A 100 000 of them were imported and they were all sold in 2 weeks If you ask me wath is the best of them: Yugo It's cheap,nice looking even for today,and it doesn't wastes much fuel...
Not only that! About the sales: Yugo was on the 3rd(!) place of the sales of the European cars - only behind BMW (2nd) and Mercedes-Benz (1st). On more pro: The maintenance of a Yugo is not so hard :)
A friend of mine phoned me up one day and said "Do you want a free car" I said yes why not, what is it? My friend would not say, all he said that it was an N reg 1996 car in white. There was me thinking it was a free Ford Mondeo. So my friend picks me up in his van and takes me to the car to have a look at it. I get there to find its a bloody Lada Riva. I took it anyway as it was free.
Give a car enough time, and it will do all three. My 02 Protege for example leaks oil out of the front main seal. Up until recently I had an 87 Stellar that did not leak a drop. I've saved its motor and put it into a Pony ;)
Jed ITS true, the transmission on my mazda 3 went out at 14,000 miles, and it was brand new when I drove it off the lot, meanwhile my mother drives a 1990 mazda 929s and all she does is put gas and make the oil changes. New cars are garbage compared to the old ones!
@@kernals12 no offence but older cars were more reliable comparatively (due to the fact that they aren't over engineered to the point of unreliability)
My grandpa had Škoda 120... he sold it after 20 years, he made only 29 000 km :-) It was our czech oldschool car but it made a lot it winter...it reached everywhere :-))))
Used to pull a 4 berth caravan with my 1300 Lada, my boss nearly got killed when his FSO's streering locked up! My Skoda Rapid was fun but the cooling system was a nightmare having the radiator in the front and the engine in the back!
"Acceleration is poor" No shit Sherlock they all have around 50 horsepower. You get what you pay for, but I bet all of these would still beat the lights out of a 2CV and a 750cc Panda any day. The depreciation on these cars was not NEARLY as bad as they made it look. Of course it's only worth half it's value after a few years, but half it's value is still only like $1600 "unquestionably a modern car" it doesn't look all that different from the Yugo and Skoda, and there's no way in hell a British car from the 80s is any better put together than an Eastern shitbox. "No sign of rust anywhere" lol
the good old biscuit tins as we dubbed them in Scotland. only problem I had with lada was rattly timing chains which was solved with 5 half penny's in the timing chain adjuster . the points often closed on long runs aswell . sturdy cars we had a fight with a skip ramming it deliberate and the skip came off worse .
@tomaszkajor Yugoslavia was emphatically *NOT* a part of the Eastern Bloc. Yugoslavs travelled freely, and traded freely with the West. The country was in fact one of the founders of the non-aligned movement.
@Strajdertom i also have a yugo (since 1990) and it still works, nothing never malfunctioned, i only broke a mirror for which i payed 4 euros (yes parts for yugo are cheap). At first people were mocking me because i have a Yugo but when i explained them how cheap everything about this car is they stopped. The only things i miss about this car (Yugo koral45) is that it has only 4 gear transmission which sucks on highways and that it has no RPM meter and a 12V socket for lighting cigarettes.
I had an FSO 125p as my first car, slow was an understatement, I was overtaken by continental drift and when it rained you could hear it rusting! would I have another? you bet I would.
I have a 1500 FSO 125p engine and the very glory of it. It is convenient, fast and safe. Convenient four-door saloon with a powerful motor and a large trunk. Suitable for Both the city and the route is long. Incineration is 8 liters per 100 kilometers.
I'd absolutely love one of those Skodas! Great cars, by far the best and highest quality vehicles coming from the Eastern bloc. And let's not forget the racing pedigree.
Then the air in the USA must be different... Or the drivers... Or you are just talking out of your behind, here in Europe where it was made, Yugo is loved for the cheapness of repairs and parts, but it certainly can take 100-200 K miles, and if you are following the instructions on service, it can run forever basically.
I would love my old Lada back, i had a 1600 ES which was very well equipped, reasonably quick (topped 100mph easily) & alas rotted like a piece of paper in the ocean lol, hence it long since bit the dust, but I'd love another one.
I had Skoda 120LS (the "luxury" model) with more powerfull 1.2 engine and better features. The car was quite reliable, but suffer from overgeating problems in the traffic jams (too complicated cooling system - the cooler in front, engine in the rear). Excellent for driving in snow (a lot of fun in drifting). Small space for baggage, weak stearing and stability (but I had the older version than that in the video, the one from video had different stearing and changed chassis) and noisy engine.
I have owned a Skoda 120 LS from 1983, which needed a new headcylinder at 25,000 km .... My Lada 1200 and 1300 was musch better, although none off them was 10 years old before they were so rusty, that i had to scrap them . The engine and the gearbox was like new after 9 years . I once drove a FSO 125 and it had an awfull steering even compared to my Lada .
I had a Red/Orange FSO125 best looking car I ever had. Bought it two years old for less than half the new price. OK it had faults an oil leak, vacuum advance did not work correctly and the distributer cap exploded?
I bought an immaculate FSO 125p 1300ML in December 1996 after my old car gave up. It had full service history, Genuine 32000 miles and 12 months MOT. The price? £125 I ran it for 6 months and got £200 for it. Only car I have ever made a profit on. Very heavy to drive and a gear change wider than a Landrover! I felt so modern when I replaced it with a 1990 Maestro DLX :)
not really, we had a Lada 2104 and after changing the spark plugs to NGK and oil to Castrol GTX3, it run much better than with the cheap parts like INA oil. they go over 300kms indeed with some maintenance. Western cars have engines blow up at 150k, Korean crap around 100k.
The only one of these cars we could buy in the United States in the '80's was the Yugo. I remember reading the review in Motor Trend Magazine. It was not recommended. They only sold them here for 3 or 4 years before nobody bought them anymore. I actually kind of like the FSO in this video, though.
What about Dacia , from Romania. The models chose to export were the finest, not that they were good but they were better than average. Like the russian models, it was "inspired" from the Renault 12.
When converting the Yogo for the UK market, the left the breakline under the passenger footwell, being a thin rather flexible floor if the passenger sympathy braked, the car could actually start losing control due to the pressure on the lines through the floor 😱😨😰
It was not the lack of compilation that held the USSR and their allies back. It was a complete lack of workers rights and participation in the planning of the economy. Most people think that it was ''communism'' that caused a bad economy, in reality it was the absence of socialism all together. Neither the USSR or Poland, Yugoslavia or East Germany were workers states (or socialist nations), they were Stalinist because although capitalism was abolished, political and economic power lay not with the working class. A conservative caste of bureaucrats controlled the economy who cared little about the needs of people. They used Marxism as excuse to keep things the way they were. In fact these cars were never used by the Stalinist elite, they drove either luxurious cars or (YES) western cars!
+Revolutionary Socialist Media Just one correction, Yugoslavia wasn't Stalinist country it was neutral . It was one of the founding members of non allied movement. Tito refused to be stalin puppet state and was expelled from Cominform in 1948
@skorob2010 I got the Lada 3 years ago, and i still have it locked away in my garage. I am a Ford man myself, but i love all classic cars/vans/trucks, and i cannot bring myself the scrap the Lada as that would be such a waste, as it starts and drives. I am not selling it as i drove a couple of times and i love it. Its got that "its so bad, its good" feel to it.
People who bought Lada's, FSO's etc. were simply not interested in acceleration and road handling. They just wanted to get from A to B in "reasonable" comfort.... forsaking cheap seats and interior build quality. The only thing worthy of criticising these cars for was their resale values. And that was due to the UK market... not a fault of the cars themselves.
Well, I doubt if GM America has designed any entirely new model in the past 20 years - they have recycled the same technology over and over. Besides, screws and other fasteners are defined by international standards, car designers don't normally have to touch them. But I agree with your point, the cars are just a top of the iceberg - what you don't normally see is the engineering work and production technology. Cars are generally not hitech but their production is.
Yugoslav tank produced at that time was one of best when tested in desert, The same company Zastava that made Yugo is now producing FIAT 500l and demands are high for that car
@razlichak That is indeed correct. People seem to confuse "Eastern Europe" and "Eastern Bloc" time and time again. Yugoslavia and Albania were not the Eastern Bloc, and were independent from Moscow's sphere of influence.
I dated a girl whose parents bought her a Yugo. The first time it rained the wiper arm assembly flew off. That was right after I tried to roll the window down and the handle came off in my hand.......but hey, it was a NEW car!
I wish they still did cars like this, the last simple, honest-to-God car was the Perodua Nippa. Perodua is probably the only budget car manufacturer left in this country.
Yes it's right... Škoda was one of best eastern manufactures, maybe only one who did not copied anything and their cars were also modern... in 60's. Then goverment said "you have nice, modern factory for 1000MB, you don't need make better car" and stuck with same rear-engined design until late 80's... But Škoda did what they could and I think they did it good...
+katsarosfiat He could've very well meant engines because remember the 2CV maxed out at 602cc and was a 2-cylinder and the Panda was smaller I think than the Yugo 45 though i could be wrong there, still a relatively small engine at 750cc Those size engines were abit small with 4 or 5 people onboard and it was rough compared with the 4s of all the others including the Yugo. Yeah the 2CV was reliable though and a heck lot more practical than most of the others but most folk always saw it as too quirky and dated to buy as an everday runabout unless of course your from France, I liked it though.
fast forward to today and you had weird things from malaysia and spain on the scene.i did a look at the cheap car scene not so long ago and didn't like what was found.in australia it's either a mitsubishi mirage,suzuki celerio and the old kia picanto.i ended up getting what is known in the uk as a vauxhall viva or an opel karl in europe but what's known in australia/new zealand as a holden spark(2017 model)also known as a chevrolet elsewhere.
In 71 I was in Kotor, Yugoslavia and watched Yugoslav made cars climb a mountainside so high that when looking down there was a blue tint to the air. Not one car had it's hood open at the top.
I recall the Lada and Yugo were sold here in New Zealand in the late 80s - the thing being is that there are still a few on the road 20 years after they stopped selling them here!
A colleague had a Lada Riva - being in the car with 6 others was an experience...
Well, they're not so bad as thought :)
yugo wasn't from the eastern block, yugoslavia was non-aligned
Yugoslavia WAS in eastern block... eatsern block doesn't mean warasaw pact
@@tomaszkajor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_split
I have a 85 Skoda great car, still running strong. I'm in Saskatchewan Canada
I loved the Skoda. Wish I had bought one now looking back
I've got an 88 Yugo GV. Also a great car, I'm in the USA.
I drove a six year old Lada 1300 SL in one of my sales jobs and for all it was a bit noisy at speed and dated to drive, it wasn't as bad as I thought and the five speed gearbox made motorways more bearable and it could do 35 mpg on the open road. Also it was surprisingly well equipped with a radio, velour seats, rev counter and clock.
When Top Gear was a car program.
+Peter Mooney *When Top Gear was **-a car program-** boring.*
+Peter Mooney Old Top Gear was succeeded by Fifth Gear.
Fifth gear was always the better program, because of Vicky
Fifth Gear was wank
+Peter Mooney Absolutely, before they became the clowns show. LMFAO!!!!
Yugoslavia was not in the Warsaw pact but the founder of the Non-Aligned movement movement.But it is typical,that people from the UK and USA didnt know much about it,because their media focused more on the good vs.evil story.Yugoslavia had good relations with the west and east. bye
It's sad but true that polarisation is so endemic in mass media. It's not true of every outlet in any country but it sure attracts attention.
Надсзпххсш
He refers to communist country's when he says "eastern block", Yogoslavia was a communist country. There were other socialist "republics" that were not in Warsaw Pact.
As a journalist I thank you for your insight. This is why I eventually want to teach journalism, to help get some of the polarization OUT of the story.
he didn't say about Warsaw pact but eastern block... it's not the same...
yugo is very good car everybody drives it here in serbia and everybody likes it even after 30 years
before war did come like CRO vs SRB we all liked yugo but now EVRYBODY LIKES IT even its serbian car WE LOVE IT
redkiller dominik it is because we loved yugoslavia and we dont¨t have it anymore now we can only love yugoslavian cars
true :(
and everyone in the modern world laughs at you
MilitantOldLady i dont care i like what i like
1:37: The Skoda Estelle wasn't a Renault design. The idea for a rear-engine design came from the Renault Dauphine along with one or two others, but the Estelle was an update of the previous 100S/110S. Which was a Skoda design. When it came to the Estelle they had a front-engine FWD design ready to enter production, but most of the finance was coming from Soviet Russia, and they said no because it would mean Czechoslovakia having a more advanced car than they did. But the body design remained, which is why it looks like the engine should be in the front.
"Very well put together", a vauxhall astra?in the 80's? in britan?British humor.
The Yugo ceased to be an option during the war in Bosnia 92-95. I had a friend at the time who worked in the parts department at a Yugo dealer, and he said you couldn't get parts for love or money.
Dacia was only briefly imported into the UK in the 1980s, Mihai. But they did not sell many. But Dacia has had the last laugh as they are now back in Great Britain whereas Lada & Zastava are no longer sold here and FSO has gone!
(Unfortunately) Zastava is also gone.
At least their assembly in Kragujevac still exists - but under leadership of Fiat. The 500L is assembled there
love my 1988 Yugo here in Texas USA!!!
+Mike Allmon I bet you get a lot of stares.
+Mike Allmon Yugo is good car. In USA price was 3999USD, for that many it was more than good. Here in Serbia (ex yugoslavia) the price was 5000 german marks. I am driving yugo 45, my is 1990. Run good. And i wanna say that the YUGO GV, GVX, GVL, GV+ for US market was better maked than the rest...
+Mike Allmon Yugo nowhere.
+Mike Allmon oh wow !
Mike Allmon do you wonna sell your Yugo?
takes me back to the 80s seeing this vid of eastern cars. i really like eastern cars and used to own a round headlamp lada estate car back in 89/90. my fave car is the lada riva estate. cant say i like fast cars like lambos and ferraris tho theyre well designed. the eastern cars have character. glad this vid shows how they were for posterity. thanx for posting it.
+nick goth Well said. They were also made to last and be dependable under the harshest of conditions.
Yugoslavia (where Yugo comes from) wasnt "Eastern block country" as a matter of fact they had better relations with west , than with east . Also , the main idea behind Yugo was to make it so cheap that average worker could buy it for only one monthly pay . Also loans in Yugoslav banks had such low interest rates(1-2&) that due to inflation you would pay back less money than you have taken . Also most ZASTAVA cars made in Yugoslavia were built under FIAT licence so zhey were basiacly western cars . You can still sometimes see Yugo driving in ex-Yu countries .
average worker never could buy a new yugo in yugoslavia from montly pay. the lowest price it had was about 4000 DEM and that wasn't average anywhere in the world. it wasn't built under fiat licence, it was built on old fiat's underpinnings, there is a difference. you can see a lot of yugos in ex-yu even today, yes....
furthermore, you still get spare parts for it TODAY
I live in Malta, and now, in 2009, you still see a few examples of the Yugo, the Lada and the Skoda featured in this video on our roads!
@classicczech Well that's because the Eastern Blocs used standardised parts. They were mass-produced in volume quantities in state-subsidised factories even when they are old-fashioned while a Vauxhall Astra MK 1 of Western Europe was only made for four years and their drivers find it more affordable to scrap them by saying "Too old to spend any more money on it." and when finding spare parts become an issue.
I recall that the Lada and rear-engined Skoda were popular in their home markets to the point where used examples from the UK were being exported back again....
@libed91 i also have two yugoslavian tractors; an IMT 549 De luxe and an IMT 533 De luxe and they both work great and i must say that yugoslavian machines are made very simple to use, are sturdy, have a great quality for their prices and are cheap and simple to repair (so that you can repair them at home without troubles)
Not too much difference between these and the cars that Americans were making in the 80s, their hideous over sizing was compensating for poor quality. The perfect car would have a reliable japanese engine, built by functional germans, with swedish safety features and styled by Italians.
See? There's still no Poles, Russians or Czechs in the equation xD
I'm no fan of most of these Eastern bloc motors, but it's hardly an in-depth appreciation given here. And when he suggested a second hand Mk1 Astra as an alternative I nearly died laughing. My mother had a Lada 1500, which was frankly mediocre, but at least the brakes worked, unlike a cousin's Astra, and the dashboard of the Lada, for all its low quality plastics, didn't have the Astra's dashboard shimmy. The Vauxhall sounded as though a nest of mice behind the bulkhead was standard fitment. Assuming there still was a bulkhead there in fact - the Astra after a few short years on our salty winter roads was succumbing to the dreaded tinworm at a staggering rate. As for GM electrics of the period... well. Let's not go there.
+Potstillbill yugo is not from eastern block,sorry
maybe not the greatest cars but when you look at the fact the styling was beautiful that helps a bit
These were good cars for 1986,but Britain's people always saying their car is the best.
So typical.
These cars still run on east European streets and
they run pretty good.
somehow ironically that my 1st car is from Britain (1996 Rover 416Si) and my 2nd car is in this video (1989 Yugo 45), I like BOTH of them!
Gotta say that I owned a 1990 FSO 1500 for a couple of years and I still praise it. It was reliable and comfy. Just try its rear seats, that's sth they don't make any more. And the way it handles... Basically you don't drive it, you sail through the asphalt.
plus the skoda estelle wasnt based on an old 60's design like the fso and lada. The only thing that let the skoda was the overheating problem
Why did they select the better equipped Lada and standard Škoda, FSO and Zastava? Or wasn't the standard model of Lada available in UK at the time?
Back when topgear was actually a car show instead of a comedy show
the best is LADA ! kisses from ALGERIA.
your crazy
unrealturbos maybe :=)
What about Fiats? Weren't they about the same price?
Also, love how different Top Gear was then. Less "entertaining", but more informative.
Oh man, the Lada Riva. Thing was a tank. I remember a couple years back my older brother was driving it and we crashed into a Toyota Corolla right between the front wheel and the driver's door. His car was very badly damaged and the door didn't open, our car only had a slightly bent bumper that was later fixed with some hammering and a broken headlight. Used to be a very reliable car but now it breaks down every couple days. Also it was a great car for long journeys.
Yugo vas the fastest sold car in U.S.A
100 000 of them were imported and they were all sold in 2 weeks
If you ask me wath is the best of them:
Yugo
It's cheap,nice looking even for today,and it doesn't wastes much fuel...
Not only that!
About the sales: Yugo was on the 3rd(!) place of the sales of the European cars - only behind BMW (2nd) and Mercedes-Benz (1st).
On more pro: The maintenance of a Yugo is not so hard :)
YES you are ! Just type eastern block in wikipedia. I cannot put a link here.
A friend of mine phoned me up one day and said "Do you want a free car" I said yes why not, what is it? My friend would not say, all he said that it was an N reg 1996 car in white. There was me thinking it was a free Ford Mondeo. So my friend picks me up in his van and takes me to the car to have a look at it. I get there to find its a bloody Lada Riva. I took it anyway as it was free.
Wouldnt say the modern car is so much more durable!
You're insane if you believe that, in the olden days, everything rusted, overheated, and leaked oil. Not anymore
Give a car enough time, and it will do all three. My 02 Protege for example leaks oil out of the front main seal. Up until recently I had an 87 Stellar that did not leak a drop. I've saved its motor and put it into a Pony ;)
Jed ITS true, the transmission on my mazda 3 went out at 14,000 miles, and it was brand new when I drove it off the lot, meanwhile my mother drives a 1990 mazda 929s and all she does is put gas and make the oil changes. New cars are garbage compared to the old ones!
@@kernals12 no offence but older cars were more reliable comparatively (due to the fact that they aren't over engineered to the point of unreliability)
My grandpa had Škoda 120... he sold it after 20 years, he made only 29 000 km :-) It was our czech oldschool car but it made a lot it winter...it reached everywhere :-))))
Used to pull a 4 berth caravan with my 1300 Lada, my boss nearly got killed when his FSO's streering locked up! My Skoda Rapid was fun but the cooling system was a nightmare having the radiator in the front and the engine in the back!
"Acceleration is poor"
No shit Sherlock they all have around 50 horsepower. You get what you pay for, but I bet all of these would still beat the lights out of a 2CV and a 750cc Panda any day.
The depreciation on these cars was not NEARLY as bad as they made it look. Of course it's only worth half it's value after a few years, but half it's value is still only like $1600
"unquestionably a modern car" it doesn't look all that different from the Yugo and Skoda, and there's no way in hell a British car from the 80s is any better put together than an Eastern shitbox. "No sign of rust anywhere" lol
Well, these depressing communist cars are still driving today, and a huge amount of them.
the good old biscuit tins as we dubbed them in Scotland. only problem I had with lada was rattly timing chains which was solved with 5 half penny's in the timing chain adjuster . the points often closed on long runs aswell . sturdy cars we had a fight with a skip ramming it deliberate and the skip came off worse .
@tomaszkajor Yugoslavia was emphatically *NOT* a part of the Eastern Bloc. Yugoslavs travelled freely, and traded freely with the West. The country was in fact one of the founders of the non-aligned movement.
@mirekkc and I meaned the car shown in the video, not all FSO cars
no Wartburg ? Maybe they were not imported in the UK ? Or Zastava ...
They were imported in the UK as the Wartburg Knight but by 1986, it had been off the market for 12 years.
Zastava were imported in the UK, one model is even featured in this video - The Yugo :P
@RussWWFC Citroen 2CV was introduced in *1948*. Comparison with cars that are 30 younger isn't really fair. :)
@Strajdertom i also have a yugo (since 1990) and it still works, nothing never malfunctioned, i only broke a mirror for which i payed 4 euros (yes parts for yugo are cheap).
At first people were mocking me because i have a Yugo but when i explained them how cheap everything about this car is they stopped.
The only things i miss about this car (Yugo koral45) is that it has only 4 gear transmission which sucks on highways and that it has no RPM meter and a 12V socket for lighting cigarettes.
My question is why do they chose a FSO 125 instead a newer FSO Polonez which is good in early and mid 80.
I had an FSO 125p as my first car, slow was an understatement, I was overtaken by continental drift and when it rained you could hear it rusting! would I have another? you bet I would.
I have a 1500 FSO 125p engine and the very glory of it. It is convenient, fast and safe. Convenient four-door saloon with a powerful motor and a large trunk. Suitable for Both the city and the route is long. Incineration is 8 liters per 100 kilometers.
I'd absolutely love one of those Skodas! Great cars, by far the best and highest quality vehicles coming from the Eastern bloc. And let's not forget the racing pedigree.
@sun777port No , this actually is Top Gear , just before Jeremy Clarkson ... Back then , it was a lot different ...
in USA the Yugo did not seem to go beyond 20K miles (that's when they are found in the cars for sale listings) :)
+granskare Yugo 45 have 45HP and 903ccm, and what you expect?
@@bibanada US-spec Yugos had - at least - 55 HP
Then the air in the USA must be different... Or the drivers... Or you are just talking out of your behind, here in Europe where it was made, Yugo is loved for the cheapness of repairs and parts, but it certainly can take 100-200 K miles, and if you are following the instructions on service, it can run forever basically.
Frankly the Skoda looks quite stylish for an eastern bloc car.
Wouldn't a second hand Cavalier have been a better bet?
Actually, I quite like the Skoda.
I would love my old Lada back, i had a 1600 ES which was very well equipped, reasonably quick (topped 100mph easily) & alas rotted like a piece of paper in the ocean lol, hence it long since bit the dust, but I'd love another one.
VERY WELL PUT TOGETHER?????? Never thought Id hear that said about a yugo.
I had Skoda 120LS (the "luxury" model) with more powerfull 1.2 engine and better features. The car was quite reliable, but suffer from overgeating problems in the traffic jams (too complicated cooling system - the cooler in front, engine in the rear). Excellent for driving in snow (a lot of fun in drifting). Small space for baggage, weak stearing and stability (but I had the older version than that in the video, the one from video had different stearing and changed chassis) and noisy engine.
I have owned a Skoda 120 LS from 1983, which needed a new headcylinder at 25,000 km .... My Lada 1200 and 1300 was musch better, although none off them was 10 years old before they were so rusty, that i had to scrap them . The engine and the gearbox was like new after 9 years . I once drove a FSO 125 and it had an awfull steering even compared to my Lada .
I had a Red/Orange FSO125 best looking car I ever had. Bought it two years old for less than half the new price. OK it had faults an oil leak, vacuum advance did not work correctly and the distributer cap exploded?
@mickeymoose76
I agree. I think its problems could be solved with parts from other cars, like engine, transmission, steering rack...
I bought an immaculate FSO 125p 1300ML in December 1996 after my old car gave up. It had full service history, Genuine 32000 miles and 12 months MOT. The price? £125 I ran it for 6 months and got £200 for it. Only car I have ever made a profit on. Very heavy to drive and a gear change wider than a Landrover! I felt so modern when I replaced it with a 1990 Maestro DLX :)
Lada was Mercedes for all these cars in terms of durability, speed and comfort.
That's like saying that tuberculosis is the least arduous of terminal diseases.
The Skoda Estelle was WAY better than any of the other cars in this video
Yes, but from eastern block it was Tatra
Yugo is space shuttle for those cars
not really, we had a Lada 2104 and after changing the spark plugs to NGK and oil to Castrol GTX3, it run much better than with the cheap parts like INA oil. they go over 300kms indeed with some maintenance. Western cars have engines blow up at 150k, Korean crap around 100k.
The only one of these cars we could buy in the United States in the '80's was the Yugo. I remember reading the review in Motor Trend Magazine. It was not recommended. They only sold them here for 3 or 4 years before nobody bought them anymore. I actually kind of like the FSO in this video, though.
You can still find these cars where I come from running strong. After 20+ yrs.
What about Dacia , from Romania.
The models chose to export were the finest, not that they were good but they were better than average. Like the russian models, it was "inspired" from the Renault 12.
Oddly enough, The Dacia 1300 (Renault 12) entered production BEFORE the Renault 12...
@zperic1 when i go to poland i see a few FSO 1300 or 125Ps on the road
When converting the Yogo for the UK market, the left the breakline under the passenger footwell, being a thin rather flexible floor if the passenger sympathy braked, the car could actually start losing control due to the pressure on the lines through the floor 😱😨😰
how was the fiat panda considered too small but the Yugo wasnt?
There! The 1986 Astra is the car with all the acceleration we can ask for
It was not the lack of compilation that held the USSR and their allies back. It was a complete lack of workers rights and participation in the planning of the economy. Most people think that it was ''communism'' that caused a bad economy, in reality it was the absence of socialism all together. Neither the USSR or Poland, Yugoslavia or East Germany were workers states (or socialist nations), they were Stalinist because although capitalism was abolished, political and economic power lay not with the working class. A conservative caste of bureaucrats controlled the economy who cared little about the needs of people. They used Marxism as excuse to keep things the way they were. In fact these cars were never used by the Stalinist elite, they drove either luxurious cars or (YES) western cars!
+Revolutionary Socialist Media
fuck off ya communists
At least you admit you are a dumbass commie.
+Revolutionary Socialist Media True!
+Revolutionary Socialist Media A verry good well wraped explanation. Molodets!
+Revolutionary Socialist Media Just one correction, Yugoslavia wasn't Stalinist country it was neutral . It was one of the founding members of non allied movement. Tito refused to be stalin puppet state and was expelled from Cominform in 1948
the yugo is a city car not a family car...
the 101 and 128 are the family cars :/
yugo skala
are old skoda based on renault
No, never! Skoda was one of the few then-communism cars which never had engineering from Western Cars - until VW took over in 1991
Skoda 105 was a pretty decent car, far above the competition in this video...
@discocreator76 Did you own one of these then?
@classicczech In Poland it's hard to see any of cars from this video.
I bought a Lada 1200 that had done 25,000 miles for £200. It was a brilliant car! I had it for two years and sold it for £450.
@skorob2010 I got the Lada 3 years ago, and i still have it locked away in my garage. I am a Ford man myself, but i love all classic cars/vans/trucks, and i cannot bring myself the scrap the Lada as that would be such a waste, as it starts and drives. I am not selling it as i drove a couple of times and i love it. Its got that "its so bad, its good" feel to it.
I'd love a mk1 Astra, especially the Opel GTE 5 door version.
People who bought Lada's, FSO's etc. were simply not interested in acceleration and road handling. They just wanted to get from A to B in "reasonable" comfort.... forsaking cheap seats and interior build quality. The only thing worthy of criticising these cars for was their resale values. And that was due to the UK market... not a fault of the cars themselves.
Well, I doubt if GM America has designed any entirely new model in the past 20 years - they have recycled the same technology over and over. Besides, screws and other fasteners are defined by international standards, car designers don't normally have to touch them.
But I agree with your point, the cars are just a top of the iceberg - what you don't normally see is the engineering work and production technology. Cars are generally not hitech but their production is.
I have an fso 125p tucked away with a fiat twin cam engine waiting to go in. Mines done 27000 miles from new :-)
Yugoslav tank produced at that time was one of best when tested in desert, The same company Zastava that made Yugo is now producing FIAT 500l and demands are high for that car
I always thought of the opel kadett as a good car, never knew why, it just looked good to me..
@kalosanin
What freedom was that?
And not a bottle of water was in sight. You would need a few whilst driving a Skoda Estelle. They overheat alot.
I felt in cuba for a second
@razlichak
That is indeed correct. People seem to confuse "Eastern Europe" and "Eastern Bloc" time and time again. Yugoslavia and Albania were not the Eastern Bloc, and were independent from Moscow's sphere of influence.
I dated a girl whose parents bought her a Yugo. The first time it rained the wiper arm assembly flew off. That was right after I tried to roll the window down and the handle came off in my hand.......but hey, it was a NEW car!
I wish they still did cars like this, the last simple, honest-to-God car was the Perodua Nippa. Perodua is probably the only budget car manufacturer left in this country.
Yes it's right... Škoda was one of best eastern manufactures, maybe only one who did not copied anything and their cars were also modern... in 60's. Then goverment said "you have nice, modern factory for 1000MB, you don't need make better car" and stuck with same rear-engined design until late 80's... But Škoda did what they could and I think they did it good...
Just bought a lada riva! Gonna treat it like a princess as i love ladas!
+JESUS so we now know what jesus would drive lol
yeah lol
ok he said that the 2cv and fiat panda were too small to be classified as family cars.......The yugo has the same size :P
Yeah, the tin snail was a 5 door whilst the Yugo's only got 3!
+katsarosfiat He could've very well meant engines because remember the 2CV maxed out at 602cc and was a 2-cylinder and the Panda was smaller I think than the Yugo 45 though i could be wrong there, still a relatively small engine at 750cc Those size engines were abit small with 4 or 5 people onboard and it was rough compared with the 4s of all the others including the Yugo. Yeah the 2CV was reliable though and a heck lot more practical than most of the others but most folk always saw it as too quirky and dated to buy as an everday runabout unless of course your from France, I liked it though.
Ditto
fast forward to today and you had weird things from malaysia and spain on the scene.i did a look at the cheap car scene not so long ago and didn't like what was found.in australia it's either a mitsubishi mirage,suzuki celerio and the old kia picanto.i ended up getting what is known in the uk as a vauxhall viva or an opel karl in europe but what's known in australia/new zealand as a holden spark(2017 model)also known as a chevrolet elsewhere.
if the panda or the 2cv are too small why is the Yugo in this then ?
Panda was smaller than 127 and Yugo was "developed" from 127, so it is bigger.
with a skoda estelle you always needed to carry a bottle water due to overheating.
@krasulova1 Winer is Yugo but he said all four cars not better then this last small western car...
Yugo is best for me !
My father had that skoda, that was our first family car :)
i did not tried the Yugo, but the Skoda, Lada and especially FSO were all crap.
Yugoslavia was not in the Eastern Block !
Eastern block isn;t the same as warsaw pact
i would of chosen the skoda 105s out of all 3 sold better than ladas and fso's . Skoda before VW takeover sold pretty well in the uk.
This is clearly when Top Gear was a motoring show, before it became just an entertainment show.