Previously, when access to Russia for imported cars was almost completely closed, most drivers thought that the products of the domestic auto industry were very good and quite at the level of Western cars. The Zhiguli, copied from the Fiat of the mid-60s, were perceived as an excellent car until the mid-80s, and even the Moskvich 2140, the ugly fruit of successive upgrades to the chassis of the pre-war Opel, the documentation for which was taken out of the occupied Germany, supplemented by incest with separate parts of Ford and Renault, seemed a worthy car.

However, the flow of new and used foreign cars that flooded into Russia in the early 90s immediately put everything in its place, showing that even the relatively cheap “folk” FORD models developed in the late 60s and early 70s are head and shoulders above what they drive conveyors of Russian factories - and better and constructively, and in terms of workmanship, and in terms of convenience for the driver. I remember well the shock caused by the study by familiar drivers, accustomed to the domestic 24th "Volga" and "Moskvich" 2140, Ford Granada and Ford Taunus cars - how they were surprised by the huge gears of the gearbox and rear axle, made with a huge margin of safety, how amazing the quality of the metal seemed everywhere, from the transmission to the body, and how unusually comfortable they felt in the cockpit. And after the Japanese “big three” (Toyota, Nissan and Honda) in the late 80s set new standards for the reliability and frequency of car maintenance, which are still too tough not only for American, but even by and large European manufacturers - the gap in the technical level of cars between the Russian automobile industry stuck at the technological level of the 60s and foreign (especially eastern) automotive industry has become blatant.

This is so obvious that now no one is arguing with this, except for the completely stubborn “soilers” who have never driven anything but a GAZ-53 truck. It is clear that the level of comfort, safety, handling and reliability of almost any Western car is many times higher than that of any domestic one. It is clear that when, on the one hand, there are “millionaire” engines (1,000,000 km before overhaul) and “eternal” galvanized bodies, and on the other hand, somehow assembled engines of an outdated design and bodies made of cheap low-quality rolled products, painted even without a primer - the difference appears immediately, and over time it grows more and more. While the owner of an imported car is driving, the owner of a domestic car is jingling wrenches under the car or fawning over the mechanics and shaking in crowded buses waiting for the next repair to be completed.

However, one myth associated with domestic cars still remains. This myth is a myth about the CHEAPEST of domestic cars, which consists of two things:

Low price new or used car

Low repair costs

If we analyze this idea point by point, it turns out the following: in fact, only a home-made amateur or a relatively rich person who wants to quickly learn how to drive can buy a used (more than 2 years) domestic car - in the first case, a person will not enjoy driving (which will be little), but from digging in pieces of iron (which will be many), and in the second case, a person gets the opportunity to make all possible mistakes (“catch” open hatches, cling to arches at the entrance to the yard, bend the suspension on tram tracks, etc.) for the lowest price, and then just throw the car away or sell it for $150-200 for parts. This is indeed an economically reasonable way - if you do not value your own life, which can very successfully stop due to a ball valve that has fallen off at speed or brakes that have not worked in time. By the way, one of my acquaintances is a good illustration of this thesis - he began to drive a "Moskvich" -2141 and rather quickly got into an accident with a head-on collision, somehow survived, the car could not be restored - he bought a new one (again "Moskvich" -2141 , the benefit of spare parts in the form of a flattened car, a whole mountain formed), and again got into an accident (now, during emergency braking, the welding of the brake pedal fell off - and he was taken out to the intersection right under the stream of cars). He bought a third “Moskvich” - and for four years now there has been no hearing or spirit from him - apparently, he was unlucky for the third time (see Fig. 1) ...

Fig. 1 This is how the VAZ 2110 looks like after a collision at a speed of 49 km/h with a collapsible barrier with an overlap of 40%. I must say that his SAAB9000 of the same age after a collision with the same barrier at a speed of 120 km / h looks much better, and its passengers remain intact.

I won’t rant here about the state of passive and active safety of domestic cars - everyone knows very well that they are frozen somewhere at the level of the global automotive industry of the early 70s. But this is also superimposed on "rationalization" in production (for example, it is precisely because of it that the front brakes of VAZs are prone to annual "souring"), seasoned with the terrible quality of components and assembly. Many have seen VAZs on the road with the front wheels turned out due to the destruction of ball joints - and yet this happens at full speed, and the driver can only pray that the uncontrollable car does not endure under the wheels of an oncoming KAMAZ ...

The life of the owner of a NEW domestic car will not be cloudless - it will continuously “crumble”, as if it were a long-term used one, due to poor assembly and low-quality components, but here the owner has at least some chance with careful handling and continuous investment of effort and funds (immediate complete anti-corrosion after purchase, total overhaul of all dubious components, expensive high-quality imported spare parts) to bring the car to acceptable conditions so that it drives more than it was under repair, and so that the driver does not expect tricks from her every minute. What all this will cost is a separate question, but, as a rule, as a result, the total cost of the “brought to mind” VAZ “Ten” will exceed the cost of the new DAEWOO NEXIA Uzbek assembly - which, although it is an Opel Cadet of the 80s of development and in comparison with modern “Japanese”, it sucks in all respects, but still initially much better than any “licked ten”.

The idea of ​​buying a NEW domestic car deserves special attention, driving it for the factory warranty period (or a little more until the next serious problems appear), repairing it under warranty, and then selling the car to some suckers, adding money and again buying a new domestic car. The idea is attractive, but has a number of pitfalls:

The domestic car now has such a workmanship that, without a preliminary bulkhead, it falls apart into pieces after 5-15 thousand km of run - that is, six months of intensive operation. In fact, the current Volga and UAZ do not drive at all without an immediate bulkhead, Moskvich Svyatogor leaves the factory immediately incomplete and with a body on which rust crawls out exactly after a year of operation (try to sell it like that later), IZH Oda is a galvanized bucket with a sea of ​​constructive defects - in short, immediate investments cannot be avoided.

The hope for a "free" warranty repair is extremely illusory. In fact, in case of any serious breakdown, you will be offered to wait a month and a half for the arrival of spare parts (if you want to ride, get out of the subway, drive to your health), not forgetting to demand maintenance at a branded service station with prices inflated at times. Due to your overpayment for routine maintenance, "free" repairs are financed, plus crappy spare parts, plus eternal bagpipes and swearing with the masters, who make no sense to repair you well - if only the warranty lasted until the end, and at least the grass does not grow there.

And most importantly, now almost everyone has already figured out what such a scheme is fraught with for the buyer, and therefore, in the first two years, a new domestic car loses its price at a breathtaking rate, even if it does not drive, but stands in the garage. Nobody believes in speedometers and service books - what country do you live in, comrade?

Therefore, it turns out that having bought a new "top ten" according to this scheme, in two years you lose somewhere around $ 3K on the fall in its price and maintenance costs. For $ 1500 a year - for such money you can not only keep some Opel Kadett in a sparkling condition, but also an eight-year-old Japanese woman of a higher class (for example, Toyota Karina E) can not only be repaired, but also licked to a shine.

The second component remains - LOW REPAIR COSTS. Here the logic of the owner of a domestic car is simple: yes, I repair much more often than the owner of a foreign car, but spare parts for my car are much cheaper. Whether this is so, and whether the cheapness of spare parts compensates for more frequent repairs - I wanted to see.

Finally, there is another reason that makes domestic cars like the VAZ Classics and Chisels attractive to not too wealthy drivers. This reason is the extortion of the traffic police. It's no secret that the owner of a sparkling foreign car is stopped "to check the first aid kit" much more often than the one who rides in a rusty six. Again, road trips are organized for those who drive a fresh shiny foreign car (or the most prestigious domestic car), and almost never affect the owners of modest used vehicles.

A special article is the problem of car theft and vandalism. As Alexander Smirnov, head of the criminal police of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg, said at a press conference, in 2001 about 5,000 hijackings were registered in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. More than 3 thousand stolen cars (60% of all thefts) are domestic "eights", "nines" and "tens", which are then dismantled for spare parts. 1493 German cars (30%) of Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW brands were also stolen. Moreover, among foreign cars, in addition to German ones, only the Toyota Land Cruiser jeep got into the "risk group". As for vandalism, not a single car is insured against it, however, thieves prefer to break off mirrors and break windows, climbing into the salon, on domestic cars and well-groomed foreign cars. In other words, the owner of a domestic "chisel" is most at risk of joining the army of robbed motorists, while the owner of a used Ford or Opel risks practically nothing, especially if the model of his car is not the most common, and the year of manufacture is not too fresh. It got to the point that over the past few years, not a single car of such a prestigious and iconic brand as Subaru has been stolen in St. teenagers cannot “ride” them because of good standard anti-theft devices, while every day a dozen domestic VAZs are stolen in the city, the vast majority of which are immediately dismantled for spare parts and sold at car markets. If out of the stolen foreign cars every 8th one is still found, then the statistics for VAZs are deplorable - they manage to find a few, and even then, as a rule, they are already half-dismantled or "naked" bodies.

As a result, the idea of ​​the FFF project began to look like this:

Find an inexpensive used foreign car that would be no less accessible for repair on its own than the domestic “chisel” 2108, the spare parts for which would not be expensive, which would not consume a lot of gasoline and would not stand out too much on the road from the flow of domestic cars, and not would be attractive to car thieves and vandals.

Why repairing a foreign car is more profitable than a Soviet car

Despite the paradoxical nature of this statement, repairing a foreign car is indeed often more profitable. The fact is that when you replace a failed node on a foreign car with a new branded one or from reliable spare parts manufacturers, you can be sure that in the near future (or rather, during the entire service life of the node) it will no longer bother you. Replacing the assembly on a Soviet car with the same domestic one, you are not sure of anything - the quality of spare parts is now such that their installation is a pure lottery. I'm not talking about various fakes, defective spare parts and outright swindle, when handicraft “refurbished” spare parts are sold under the guise of new ones. As a result, when a newly installed ball joint unexpectedly flies out or a “completely new” shock absorber starts to leak, you end up not only on the cost of a new (and again “lottery”) spare part, but also on the work of replacing it, and often also for diagnostics (a typical case is a malfunction of the carburetor, power and ignition systems, gas distribution, cylinder-piston group, when it is not so easy to understand what exactly has failed).

This does not mean that everything domestic is necessarily bad. It is quite possible, for example, to buy fuel and oil filters made in St. Petersburg, or use domestic fasteners, hoses and clamps in cooling systems, washers and fuel lines. But God forbid you to block domestic CV joints from “chisel” or ball joints from “classics” to a foreign car - such momentary “savings” will not lead to anything good.

Separately, it should be noted the situation with spare parts for Soviet cars produced by serious Western firms. Their quality is not inferior to the quality of spare parts for foreign cars, and the prices are somewhat lower due to the fact that they are imported in large quantities and sold more vigorously, as well as due to competition with cheap domestic spare parts. In this case, it makes sense to remake some systems of your foreign car to use such "Russian" spare parts - for example, put a "Zhiguli" WEBER-32DCR instead of a standard carburetor or use milled pads for "Niva" manufactured by some European companies instead of regular brake pads.

In general, the idea is this: if you have “golden hands” and at the same time do not feel sorry for your own time (like it costs nothing) - buy a “chisel”, it will really be cheap and at the same time in six months or a year you can with a wrench in your hands thoroughly study the structure of the car, as well as become a deep connoisseur of local aftermarket markets. There is only one problem: you will have to travel quite rarely and not far. If you don’t have a lot of free time, and you can calculate every hour spent in dollars - domestic cars are not for you, they simply will not be profitable. About how exhausting the constant expectation of “well, something hasn’t fallen off for the third week already - is it really today?”, I’m not talking about ...

Ergo: repairing a foreign car is more profitable, because less often.

Why a used foreign car is better than a new Soviet car

Firstly, do not believe those who will assure you that “and nothing has broken in my Zhigula for the third year” - these guys are cunning. Actually, all cases of the so-called “indestructibility” of domestic cars can be divided into two groups:

These are “Zhigulis” of the 70s, maximum of the early 80s, and mostly “classics” (models 2101-2106). In those years, the Italian equipment at AvtoVAZ had not yet had time to completely wear out, and no one particularly saved on the quality of metal and coatings - therefore, in the total mass, there were individual successful cars that were well assembled from more or less high-quality parts. I myself have such a “penny” in 1971 in the garage, it is still on the move - well, there are practically no domestic parts there, even the bolts are branded “Fiat”.

This is again a Zhiguli (as a rule, Sputnik or Samara 2108), which were planned to be exported (or re-exported) in the late 80s - early 90s. Their bodies were stamped from a different iron, painted better, assembly was more carefully controlled, and many components were imported. This also includes the early “Muscovites” - “Aleko” and “Svyatogora” of export execution, as a rule, with VAZ or Renault engines. Among these machines, reliable copies also periodically came across.

These two cases, with a successful combination of circumstances and investing money and effort into the car immediately after purchase (full anti-corrosion, total broach, adjustment, reassembly of poorly assembled components, replacement of an obvious marriage), really made it possible to get a car that could, with careful operation and maintenance, leave 5-7 seasons without major breakdowns (any “little thing”, such as torn cables, breaking switches and warping doors, the owners of domestic “cars” have long been considered breakdowns). However, approximately from the second half of the 90s, the “shop closed” - the domestic auto industry became completely uncompetitive in the world market, hopes for export earnings were gone, equipment fell apart, good metal became unavailable during the day, and the last criterion remained for the domestic market - low price for a "new" car. And the factories began to save on everything - from assembly and painting (they painted the bodies without even washing off the oil left on the iron from the press dies, and immediately with the final paint, without primer, etc. - and even often not in an immersion bath, but to save expensive paint with spray guns from the outside), and ending with components and materials (a typical example is regular “Zubil” seats, the filler of which with some probability crumbles into dust after about 3 years of operation). All this, superimposed on the stupid design of cars (which is worth, for example, the front suspension of the Moskvich-2141, in which the rubber bands basically do not go longer than 20-25 thousand km, no matter what you put them on, or the electrical connector in the “chisel”, lying under the mat in a non-drying puddle and rotting away in half a season), gives a deadly effect - all my friends, the owners of new domestic cars, repair them all the time, during everyday trips around the city, a month does not pass so that something serious does not fly out - from shock absorber struts to a water pump and from electronic components to body welding.

To prove this thesis, I will quote from the Autoreview describing how the one-year-old Oka was sent on its last journey for a crash test: At first, the Oka stubbornly did not want to start. Then, already on the road, "bite" the front brake pads. Halfway through, the ignition began to mope, then for some reason the carburetor became clogged. And at the entrance to the Dmitrovsky training ground, the Oka desperately rattled the rear wheel bearing. She resisted like a cow being led to a slaughterhouse, and seemed to understand that now neither her one-year-old age, nor only 26,000 kilometers of run would be of any use to anyone.

Do you get it? The car, which is a year old, having traveled some miserable 26,000 km, practically fell to pieces during one short trip around Moscow. Does anyone really need something like this? But they buy, damn it! Twilight of the mind, and only ...

The degradation of the domestic auto industry can be traced even by the VAZ album of body parts - the tolerances for the dimensions of the window and door openings of the "Classics" are +/- 2 mm (by the standards of the Japanese - insanely many), on the VAZ2108-2109 already +/- 5 mm, and an apotheosis in total is the Niva, on which the tolerance is set to +/- 6 mm. Think about it - the factory stamps are crooked and worn out so much that deviations in dimensions of more than a centimeter are declared acceptable! How will the glass hold in such openings? How can you hope that water will not seep into the cabin?

In addition, the problems of domestic cars are not limited to frequent breakdowns and repairs - the fact is that even when the Soviet car drives, it drives in such a way that at times you think “it would be better if it was laid up”. Actually, these problems can be grouped into two large groups:

Low level of comfort, poor ergonomics, heavy control - in general, everything that leads to rapid driver fatigue.

Low level of security - both passive and active. This includes all the reasons for the high injury rate in accidents and the reasons for the increased likelihood of an accident (poor handling, maneuverability, low dynamics, weak brakes, unreliable chassis).

Apparently, no one will argue with the first point now - after all, even on the extremely cheap lightweight Fiesta, an air brake booster and rack and pinion steering (by the way, quite easy even at low speeds) are installed, and comfortable seats with lateral support and a high ceiling complement the comfort cabin to the minimum acceptable level. I’m not talking about the fact that the interior of domestic “cars” seems to have been designed by some masochists - well, why put a fuse box in the “chisel” so that it constantly clings to the driver’s boot? Why was it necessary to make these sharp corners sticking out from everywhere? And why are these terrible, hard-to-turn switches strewn across the panels in such a way that you have to reach for them, distracting from the road? Why in the Fiesta nothing sticks out under the driver’s feet, and all the controls are grouped so that you don’t have to reach for them - and even the starting enricher (“choke”) is placed on the steering column, and the windshield wiper control is on the steering column switch? And this is the Fiesta of the very first generation - that is, the designers of Ford from the very beginning design cars for the driver, and 20 years of production of the same junk does not help the domestic auto industry - even during this period, ergonomic flaws do not really get better, because that no one at the factories really needs it, "and so they buy."

In the same piggy bank, you can add rough suspensions that transmit vibrations of the wheels to the body, noisy engines, axles and boxes, non-rigid bodies (especially for five-door “chisels”) with poor sound insulation, somehow hung with rattling and creaking plastic - all this does not just cause a feeling of discomfort, but also indirectly affects driving safety - after all, everyone understands that a driver who is tired, irritated by squeaks and clanks reacts more slowly to traffic conditions, often makes wrong decisions, etc.

Much can be said about the second point. No one has ever seriously designed the weak bodies of domestic “cars” with the expectation of absorbing impact energy and safe deformation. Therefore, in the event of an accident, the interior warps in the most arbitrary way, various sharp corners of the power elements of the body crawl out into it, the doors jam tightly, and the unfortunate driver and passengers strive to break their skulls, hitting their heads on the body pillars. On some models, the neglect of passive safety goes so far that these cars turn into real coffins on wheels - a typical example is the Oka, which has rightfully earned the popular nickname “Box of Death”. Among the mass of flaws in its design, a hard U-shaped hood stands out, which does not crumple in a head-on collision, but enters through the front glass into the body, literally chopping off the heads of the driver and front passenger. Side impacts, even rather weak ones, easily break through the thin doors of the Oka, causing serious injury to the driver or passenger. The passive safety of the “Chisel” is also not too high, and even a rear impact can be deadly in it - the backs of the front seats easily break in half, the spines of the driver and front passenger break along with them, and then paralysis for life or death follows - like cards lie down.

Safer (in the "passive" sense) "Moskvich" -2141, "Svyatogor" and "Volga" - simply because of their large size and weight, but they have serious problems with active safety. In general, all “sovkomobiles” are poorly controlled (cars of the classical layout are unstable on slippery roads, and front-wheel drive ones, as a rule, are prone to an unexpected breakdown in the skid of the front wheels) and have poor dynamics due to low-power engines with poor acceleration curves (this increases the time of maneuvers and increases the likelihood of accidents). Only “Svyatogor” with a two-liter Renault engine and a heaped up “Eight” with an injection engine 1.7 and sports suspensions more or less drop out of the series - but their prices are no longer very compatible with the concept of “cheap car”.

At the same time, even such a cheap EuroFord, developed in the mid-70s (“Fiesta” and “Escort” of the first generation), is much safer and better driven than “modern” domestic cars. I put the word “modern” in quotation marks, because there is actually nothing modern in the currently produced soviet vehicles - these are designs based on units and technologies of the mid-60s level. And nothing changes - for example, the external design of the new Niva was designed for 9 years, during which time three chief designers have changed - and they started doing it when the chassis was already ready. That is, the car that VAZ passes off as ultra-modern and is only going to be put on the assembly line with the assistance of General Motors, has a chassis that is at least ten years old (of course, based on units that are at least twenty years old) and a design that is already eight years behind the world level. Thus, if by the time of mass production of this device you compare it with a used foreign car 8 years ago, you will find that this foreign car is structurally more modern than the “novelty” of the domestic auto industry.

Ergo: a used foreign car is better than a new Soviet car because it is newer in design, more convenient, more comfortable and safer.