Class: Kommunist Kars
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I proudly present my Kommunist Kar, a 1988 Yugo GVX, painted in a majestic Rustoleum FireRed. This car somehow boasts over 90,000 original miles and has never, ever failed to start in conditions between -10 and 100 degrees farenheit even after sitting for weeks on end. In the time since I saved it from the junkyard, it has participated in the 2019 Retreat From Moscow(Organizer's Choice), 2019 Detroit Concours D'Lemons(Class Winner), crossed the Mighty Mackinac Bridge(This is "The Car" that blew off in 1989!) and driven a few laps at 80+Mph on Michigan International Speedway! I truly love this car and do everything I can to keep it on the road, which fortunately does not require much more routine, if not less, maintenance than a normal 30 year old car. I get aggressive with anyone who dares imply it's a bad car in my presence. It's up to go to the grocery store, drive to work or something silly like a 600 mile drive to get a restaurant-served hamburger during a pandemic. The compression is hilariously low on the 32 year old communist hamster-drive, but it can still pull up to 90mph and keep up with traffic!
There's additional Yugo hilarity along with my other lemons fleet on Instagram @DlangsHoopties.
@AlanGalbraith Well, we were looking for a 24 hrs of lemons racecar and the majority of the team was from the former soviet block. We found a sponsor who was gracious enough to let us race if we built him a car. We asked for the cheapest one he has. He told us about the Niva he pulled out of the Canadian swamp some years ago for $200 (canadian).
We went through the process of getting the cage approved by Nick Pon in an endless string of emails. We had to make sure that the first ever unibody 4x4 produced in the world would be allowed to DOMINATE on the track. We were hoping for the rain so that we could display the prowess of the Soviet system, but our 5 year plan was thwarted by unseasonably warm october weather.
How about a Wartburg? Not just any Wartburg, but THE Wartburg. The 2009 LeMons essay contest giveaway car.
After the car completed the vaunted “Trifecta of Crap” with Misfit Toys Racing, it was sold to a high school shop teacher who disassembled it and gave up. Jim of Misfit Toys bought it back and eventually made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Being the car was in a million pieces in boxes, I spent 3 years deciding what to do with it. It was out of sight out of mind in a Harbor Freight tent garage while I was looking for something from the 50’s to make into a Gasser. Enter my brain, with the “hey dummy there’s something cool right outside the kitchen window”
Car currently is almost finished. Should be done soon, pandemic giving me time away from racing to concentrate on building.
Here is my 1973 Fiat 124 special, mileage unknown. While not a communist car, the Fiat 124 berlina served as the basis for the Russian Lada Riva, the Spanish Seat 124 and others. I purchased the car from an eastern European guy at a chop shop is a shady part of town. Olive is powered by a 1400cc pushrod engine making an adequate 70 hp. The car does not have a heater, fan, wiper motor or bumpers, but it does have an AM/FM cassette and rust.
Here is me over heating.
Here are some stripes I made.
I also made the wood dash inserts.
Stockton, CA
I don't remember exactly where this is.
Ladas and Yugos demonstrate how far our Eastern Bloc fraternal socialist siblings strayed from the one true path set by Chairman Mao. As the Chairman so beautifully stated, "Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice and from it alone. They come from three kinds of social practice: the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment."
Clearly, Eastern Bloc countries believed quality vehicle design and production would fall from the sky, as my 2012 Great Wall Motors Voleex C20R dominated at Lemons' Rust Belt GP, winning its class by a 30 lap margin and not exploding into a million pieces. The failure of other Communist cars to dominate Lemons races and rallies everywhere is almost certainly the fault of wreckers, kulaks, and Anti-Soviet agitators, which the Cheka will thoroughly investigate.
Its presence in this country, and how I came to own it, is a state secret that must be preserved to continue the struggle. Unauthorized disclosure is subject to a minimum of a Tenner in a hard labor camp.
