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Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
How can we forget the FWD Lada Samara and the Lada Niva. Well, the Niva basically resembled a Yugo on steroids...
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I recall that the Samara "boasted" some development input from western companies such as Porsche (when Porsche loaned their name out on all sorts of crap - I even have an external HDD which is broken with a Porsche badge on it - thank god I resisted a Panamera...).
Here is a test from Old Top Gear (when it was about cars) featuring a Yugo and a Lada, oh and a rear engined Skoda before VW owned them...
Quote:
Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
Interesting to note that Fiat had some good relations with the Eastern Bloc dictatorships...
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I believe FIAT agreed to build a factory (essentially move the tooling for FIAT 124s) to Russia in exchange for Steel as Russia had little foreign exchange in return.
They also sold the FIAT 125 factory to Poland under the same deal and later production of smaller models from the 500, 600, 800 and the 126. All of these were made in Poland.
The steel FIAT got was very poor quality and more or less cemented the reputations of FIAT, Alfa Romeo and Lancia as cars which rusted really badly - it hit Lancia really badly, Lancia withdrew from the UK in the 1990s selling under 30 cars in the last year.
The worst car hit by this was the Alfasud which was a superbly engineered car but suffered from the inferior steel and that fact it was built in Mafia dominated southern Italy with little or no experience in building cars. A lost opportunity really.
The Lada And Polski FIAT) 124/125 models were different from the FIAT ones as they used different (less powerful but more reliable) engines, thicker steel (wonder why
) and some other simplifications which made them (arguably) more reliable than the FIAT versions. The Russian models could survive Russian winters and (if you look at Russian "car crash videos") there are still quite a few in daily use - simple 4 door, live axle, RWD saloons and estates.
Unfortunately time does not stand still and the west had produced the the Renault 16, Austin Maxi, VW Golf etc. and moved the technology on to FWD and hatchbacks. It only took Ford and GM another decade to join, but hey superpowers are very slow
FIAT sold the 127 and 128 models to Zastava which were rebadged as the Yugo in the west in the form of the faceilifted 127, and the Zastava models which were the 128s. Strangely Zastava decided to invent their own 128 model as a five door hatch and didn't make the really nice 128 Coupe.
The Yugo Sana appeared at the same time as the FIAT Tipo
Tipo:
Sana:
Although the Sana was an entirely new car made by Yugo (and designed by of course that italian guy who designs every car - Giugiaro - it used some FIAT engines, and people saw it as the same thing underneath.
Unfortunately Yugoslavians decided to kill each other because of petty ethnic and religeous grounds - and now seem to have found some peace (I hope) so that potential was lost, or stalled at least as an above post points out that Zastava is still in business - good for them
