Re: A Trabant owner rebuilds his entire drivetrain....
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:23 am
The End wrote:What amazes me is reading about Trabants, Wartburgs, Nivas, and other Soviet/Eastern European cars finding their way into Western Europe, Britain, and even Canada. You'd think the Cold War would mean the West would never allow Communist products into their markets considering that Western products would never be allowed in Communist countries, at least not for the non-elite.
If you had "hard currency" (i.e. American dollars) you could buy Western stuff from the "Beryozka" ("little Birch tree") store in the USSR. Other Warsaw Pact states had stores like that, (I think.)
Ladas were sold in Great Britain and Canada, Wartburgs in the US, but the number of dealerships were small. Lots of used Soviet cars found their way into Finland, and really some vehicles never made it, like the 4x4 UAZ van, and some of the larger military/industrial trucks. The Cold War meant nothing when it came to trade of certain items.