Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Moskvitch is back - no news about Trabant

Taking a break from the seat-gripping (no pun) elections result in Lebanon (and no, you cannot pin Jad Ghosn's 88 vote loss on me, I don't vote in Metn).

So to quote a satiric comment "Russia has invented a time machine".

Moskvitch is back.

OK, first the story. Renault is pulling out of Russia - like many other major brands following the Ukraine war. But in order not to leave 45,000 people in its factory jobless, it decided to sell their Moscow plant to the municipality for one rouble (with the option of buying it back in 6 years - by then either the war would have ended or the public opinion in the world would have shifted. Whichever comes first).

So Moscow is back to building the car it knows how to build, the Moskvitch. Symbol of all things related to the USSR, the car actually won some design awards, some races, had its line expand to Belgium at one point (with a fully factory there). Sure, the brand was eclipsed by the better-built Lada eventually.

Of course, if one can bring the Moskvitch back, my stomach is tickling about the East-German Trabant. If you have not seen the Trabant scene in the movie Goodbye Lenin, please do, it's comedy gold. 

Actually why not watch Goodbye Lenin here...