Umm, some people talk complete tripe on here!
Me & ex bought one brand new in 1987 C129RDP from a small family dealers in Cold Ash near Newbury.
Ran it for 110K miles & 10 years in that time the garage rebuilt the engine & gearbox. The engine because my ex used to have zero mechanical sympathy & it cruised at an indicated 95MPH OK flat out! The gearbox because a bearing was noisy. It had a new exhaust system & new brake hoses. ALL UNDER WARRANTY even the exhaust & with no questions asked! It had a small amount of welding for it's last MOT.
Bits I paid for was a carb idle valve & several headlights at £100 each! because they cracked (headlights are Carello, italian not Russian) otherwise oil, filters & tyres. Oh & I had it repainted to remove her parking & other dings.
It used to carry 10-19 paving slabs from the garden centres, moved god knows what from house to dump & back again & towed various trailers including a 1Ton boat!
It when to the scrappy in the sky in the end because she'd crashed it at the 7 year mark & damaged both wings which despite me beating out & filling the local constabulary decided were too dodgy, although the MOT tester was happy! Also the gearbox died & lost second & third.
Value for money certainly, credibility NIL!
|
In a similar vein, what about all the FSOs and Yugos?
I had a white Yugo 45 as my first car, ahh memories.......
Chris
|
It really is remarkable just how far Fiat's tentacles reached around that period.
I actually had a while FSO Polonez for a few months (got it cheap) to keep me on four wheels - amazingly the kids, then teenagers, loved the contrast of the red vinyl seats with the paintwork.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
|
|
Ha ha. Had a beige Riva 1500 estate that was a flyer. Hurrying home from work one evening I passed some cars on the dual carriageway. Included PLOD who said I was doing 105 mph. Got off with them laughing. One of those cars you always remember. Eventually died and was towed away to the breakers yard. Still have the keys and two new headliights for it!
|
Not a lada but saw a beige one of these in Selby last year on Polish plates.
fsomoto.xip.pl/fotos/wojtyla1.jpg
|
|
Its probably a Polish version of the Gorky (now Nizny Novgorod) built Pobeda or Volga 21 (the victory as a translation) in Poland these were call Warsawa (ph. Var-zarva) maybe of interest that Nizny holds a race around the town once a year for these models - the rarest is the cabriolet.
|
|
|
|
Ran it for 110K miles & 10 years in that time the garage rebuilt the engine & gearbox. The engine because my ex used to have zero mechanical sympathy & it cruised at an indicated 95MPH OK flat out! The gearbox because a bearing was noisy. It had a new exhaust system & new brake hoses. ALL UNDER WARRANTY even the exhaust & with no questions asked! It had a small amount of welding for it's last MOT.
How did that work? You had engine and gearbox rebuild under warranty?
IIRC the warranties on these at the time were 2-year. If I had that level of problem in the first two years of ownership of any car it'd be kicked into touch faster than you could blink, warranty or no.
Ladas were rubbish -- but that's because they were Fiats. Makes perfect sense.
|
|
Look at what the former communist stsates are producing now. Fiat Panda (excellent and extremely well built budget car), Toyota Aygo etc., Kia Cee'd, new model Ford Ka, Skodas (I'm sure I've forgotten others here). These countries are still poor but are getting their acts together and have young, well educated workforces. Compare with Russia. An economy crippled by corruption, crime and politicians harking back to the good old communist days. Do they produce any cars worth having? I don't think so.
|
|
|
Ladas were rubbish -- but that's because they were Fiats. Makes perfect sense.
They weren't Fiats. They just looked like them.
|
|
One Lada on the M25 southbound near Gatwick, Wednesday am ~ 1100 hrs. Just thought you'd like to know.
|
|
|
I seem to remember that many East Europeans were buying up Ladas and similar cars in the UK for buttons and taking them back home.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
|
|
|
They weren't Fiats. They just looked like them.
I know that -- it was 5am and I was moody. Just my little dig.
I still maintain that a car should not need an engine AND gearbox rebuild within 2 years / 50K miles no matter how unsympathetic. My brother owned a Nissan Bluebird estate at around the same time and thrashed it to within an inch of its life -- 18 years and 290K miles later that car is still going, original engine (gearbox did blow, but at 220K). A bloke in my home town still runs around in it.
|
|
|
|
How did that work? You had engine and gearbox rebuild under warranty? IIRC the warranties on these at the time were 2-year. If I had that level of problem in the first two years of ownership of any car it'd be kicked into touch faster than you could blink warranty or no. Ladas were rubbish -- but that's because they were Fiats. Makes perfect sense.
Yup 2 years & 60K, it did 48K in 2 years. Treated better it would have been fine, zero mechanical sympathy including running it with with the oil off the end of the dipstick! Nowt would have survived but at the time no one would have had a flexible warranty enough to do that & cover the exhaust, which would have been wear & tear!
Kicked into touch, yes brilliantly stupid suggestion! And replaced with what, no money in fact at one point close to bankruptcy so you run what you have.
Ladas are only rubbish to those that have never owned them hence my post!
New Riva estate was £4500 on the road, with headlight wash wipe & loads of other bits & bomb proof warranty. Nearest equivalent Escort estate in pauper spec. around £7K no contest.
And only the ignorant refer to them as Fiats, the body shape is 125, the engine & gearbox were Lada designed & had nowt to do with Fiat ever.
|
I see that tr7 at least knows that the Lada engine was Lada. But of course the original Lada body was based on Fiat 124 not 125 (125 was Polski-Fiat).
Still, I did own one and it was rubbish. The owner was asking £400 but after I poked my thumb through a rusty front wing she let it go for £190 (goodness I felt smart. But not for long). My wife liked the thing but I never did. It was thirsty, noisy, heavy to drive and incapable of holding its tune for more than a couple of days. There was no vacuum retard (or advance if you prefer) device on the distributor. I took the engine to pieces and was appalled by the design of the valve gear and indeed the state it had got into running on too little filthy oil in the hands of its previous owner.
I suppose the thing was rugged in a way and it was easy to work on all right. The heater was very good. Otherwise it was quite exceptionally nasty. The worst of my five Skoda Estelles was a paragon of refinement, sophistication, reliability and economy by comparison.
|
it used to be a 3 day job to change a starter on a lada lud
and i agree the best thing about them was the heaters,even the uprated heaters in land rovers never felt as warm as a lada.
i must add i never liked them but they were a good way of getting rid off old stale tea cakes and dailly mirrors in the wings,plus sometimes you could go on a history tour as you pealed off the old dressings and read the dates that a previous owner had used,a bit like the duckhams tins you used to find wedged into previous bodged holes on british "classics" now one only finds panini"s and lattes
|
it used to be a 3 day job to change a starter on a lada lud
>>
Starters went all the time on Estelles but they were a doddle to change once you knew how. But I put a clutch in our Lada in the gutter round the corner (wouldn't do it now though). Took the gearbox out, put my head in its space and lined up the holes in the assembly by eye.
Wasn't all that much fun to tell you the truth. Still, kept my mind off work :o)
|
|
|
|
|
|
