[antinomian]

When the Soviet Union went down some of its leaders expressed fears that Russia would become a mere source of raw materials for the west. I don't think they ever imagined they would find themselves serving in that role for their former satellites.

[tired1]

i bought a ‘91 Skoda in Poland last year and took it from the east to west. i raced against a Mercedes on the back roads and went head to head with him. when we hit the highways, he blew me away because of pure power.
i don’t know how many cars i’ve owned in my life, but that car handled the best.

[damondonion]

It's highly likely that eastern block car makers suffered from one of the same problems which Saab and Audi (then Auto Verein) encountered around 1968 - 1975 or thereabouts only to a greater extent, i.e. that it became politically and economically impossible to go on making cars with 2-stroke engines. The 2-stroke engines were good for what they were and they always started easily and ran nicely in cold weather, which is a big plus in places like Germany, Poland, or Russia. I had a DKW once as a teenager and if I had to live my life over, would have kept it until I was out of college; it was a better car than anything else I drove in those years.

The first several years worth of Saab's and Audi's cars with 4-stroke engines were just as bad as anything made in the Eastern block; the first 4-stroke engine for the Saab 99 was an engine designed for pumping water out of coal mines...