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This comparison is just head-up-ass silly without statistics.
There are 75+ year-old Ford F-1s running around, with their original engine blocks:
https://classiccars.com/listings/view/2115325/1948-ford-f1-for-sale-in-prescott-arizona-86305
https://classiccars.com/listings/find/all-years/ford/f1
brought to you by capitalism!
Even without that, any old car can be made to work if you throw parts and labor at it. This idea that “communism made a car that ran for 30 years” is completely worthless with a single example. What matters is how many were manufactured and how many of those are still functional at 5, 10, 15, 20+ years. One sample is bad statistics.
Capitalism also produced the world’s most reliable and repairable pickup truck - the Toyota Hilux. If you were going to make a comparison just on lifetime operating hours vs. maintenance cost, Toyota would win globally no problem. If you were going to make a comparison based on operating hours in harsh conditions, Toyota would also win that.
That’s a capitalist car btw. Mercedes from West Germany
you’re making too much sense for some neomarxist kiddie dimwits here.
Ah yes, the good old communist Mercedes W123.
That is the peak chassis form, you may not like it, but its true.
It’s peak car, tbh.
I guess they were looking for a photo of a broken down lada but didn’t find one 🤣
Was it actually a communist car? Trying to sift through info online it looks like it was made by west Germany, which I associate with the western postwar powers, but I really dont know much about any of this
Anyone know if it was a particularly good car?
It’s a Mercedes, which is pretty much a symbol of German capitalism. I was trying to point out the irony of using this as a talking point to support communism.
The deisel one is well known for being quite reliable and easy to keep running for a very long time. Also known for being very well buit.
They were built like tanks. But they drove like tanks too.
They handled better than most contemporary cars, not sporty but safe and comfortable, but most cars back then were rather agricultural compared to today.
Like a tank, but slower!
I lost the gas cap for one. The guy at the parts store laughed at me when I asked for a gas cap for a Mercedes, then he looked through the book said “Oh” and grabbed one from the shelf that had five of them on it. It’s the same cap as tractors use.
Smh just found another communist Mercedes.
Don’t ask Mercedes what they were doing between 1934 and 1945.
Or IBM
well you can, they’re forced by law to acknowledge it.
And BMW, and Krupp, Hugo, Bayer, blah, blah…. Yeah. Any industry that could industry produced for the Reich.
I’m not saying that to be “everyone was doing it,” but wondering why the need to point out what historically is well known and definitely not a secret.
Funny how communists didn’t have a problem with that brand, isn’t it?
Nazi weren’t communists. But you did find a Nazi car
Ok. But far right fascists are trying to convince people that the Nazis, or the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”, was a leftist socialist party.
Well far-right fascists are wrong and always have been. They might dupe a concerningly large number of people, but most of those people aren’t on the fediverse.
And the sarcasm in that comment seemed to register clearly
but most of those people aren’t on the fediverse.
You’d be surprised.
And the sarcasm in that comment seemed to register clearly
Well, at least 2 of us didn’t catch that. But I get it now.
There might be a parallel fediverse where fascists thrive like flies on shit, but I’m pretty this side of the fediverse is pretty thoroughly defederated from that side of it, and I’m pretty sure most nazi accounts on instances around here would be blocked, banned, and deleted. And any instance that gains a reputation for permissiveness towards nazis would likely get defederated before long.
So maybe it’s not exactly airtight, but there are mitigations in place and it’s better than any corporate social media platform in that regard.
Well, at least 2 of us didn’t catch that. But I get it now.
Don’t get me wrong I’m usually an advocate for the /s and in hindsight I do think it would have been appropriate for that comment. Both for the unwary lurker who doesn’t have the media literacy to understand the difference, and for the web scrapers that are training the next generation of robots based on these comment chains.
So I guess you weren’t necessarily wrong for calling it out, but a “you forgot the /s” would have landed better than “nazis weren’t communists, jfc”
TIL: Nazis were communists
/S
C’mon man.
An neither gives you an actually good car
that’s because the right thing is to switch to bike
Rights to repair hurts the bottom line of shareholders, its evil, communistic and socialistic!!!
Is the Tesla a spectacle for fools? Yes, but:
The first vehicle I ever owned is a truck older than I am. It still runs, and does work.(Built in USA)
American tractors older than any of their operators are still being bought and sold. I gre up with ine, still fucking runs.
You been to Cuba? Why is this they repair American cars older than anyone driving them, instead of importing and fixing Ruuskicars?
Dumb-ass comparison XD
I love the communist side of the picture - western car, but with bonnet up and no available spares
Comparing tech 50 years apart build for two very different purposes sure reads objectively.
Also Mr. Gas guzzler over there is unfit for today’s world.
And cold gas thrusters cannot be that expensive in the whole scheme of all things supercar. They also put a vacuum in there soooo.
TVs made to soviet design famously caught fire, this was before this all printed circuit board deal was perfected. they just used cardboard-like material for that, it was flammable, absorbed water over time, and there were too closely spaced traces with high voltage on them
fr4? that’s still the cheapest pcb material around. great for prototyping.
tvs were made before fr4 was a thing
true, but fr4 is also a nema-designation and the material existed before that.
TVs were hugely dangerous in the early days. People used to get electrocuted all the time. They had hugely high voltage and exploded sometimes.
Trabants were shit.
And you had to wait ten years to get one.
In .ml terms that means you got 40 years of enjoyment out of your communist car!
Plus going 0-60 in five minutes gave you more time to bask in awe at all the slate gray brutalist architecture!
It was for sure not just the communists doing grey brutalism!
True, but pointing that out doesn’t really go with the flow of the banter 🤷🏻
https://fee.org/articles/the-worst-car-ever-a-brief-history-of-the-trabant/
It wasn’t that the Trabant had a weak two-stroke engine, though it did. It wasn’t just that the Trabant was made with recycled waste (usually from wool or cotton), though it was. It wasn’t that Trabants topped out at 60 mph and “smoked like an Iraqi oil fire,” as one writer put it.
No, the Trabant’s biggest problem was that it never really improved.
They were kind of ok when they were launched in 1964. The thing is that east germany totally was not able to keep up with western tech and the politburo even forbid the manufacturer from improving the car. So they were still producing a 1964 car in 1989 with totally outdated tech. And they were not able to produce enough for the demand, leading to decades long waiting times
They were very outdated even in the 1960s. After the German reunification, people were simply abandoning them by the side of the road behause they literally had zero value.
They were pretty modern in some ways. Transverse front engine layout, independent rear suspension, body panels made from recycled materials.
… two stroke engine…
Yes, that is not one of the “some ways” I mentioned…
Have you done any research in communest cars? I like shitting on capitalism as much as the next guy but cumunist cars were unreliable as fuck.
This is easily the most retarded thing I’ll see on the Internet today 🤣 feel bad.
The Lada Riva. That symbol of communism.
Was just a rebadged Fiat 124.
It was originally a capitalist invention that the commies took credit for.
If you haven’t seen already most if not all of USSR technology was stolen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if tradition continued to Russia
Learning is not stealing… That aside. There were a bunch of FIAT license cars in the socialist states.
Getting help from your buddy to figure something out in class isn’t the same as copying their answers. There is nothing inherent in that design that makes it more reliable, so why do the two cars look exactly the same?
Learning is not stealing, but stealing is also not learning.
The USSR officially licenced FIAT’s cars, so much so that FIAT engineers planned and helped build the production line in Tolyati itself. Also the Soviet version had some stronger bits in order to withstand the bad roads in the rural areas.
In general one cannot merely copy a car design and mass produce it at scale and up to quality. Half if not most of the know-how for mass producing a car that actually runs and lasts is within the manufacturing processes. From exact metal alloys, specifics of forging processes, machining processes, the actual tooling for all those, to coating materials, paints, etc.
I particularly enjoy the “stolen technology” line about Russia and China, because it’s a tacit admission that capitalism works by keeping people deliberately poor and miserable so that a profit can be extracted from them.
Neither capitalism or communism gives you reliable cars. What helps is good regulation for minimum warranty periods, mandatory maintenance and spare parts availability for 15+ years, interdictions of dark patterns (e.g: end user should be able to replace the headlamps, oil filter and such easily with basic tools). And also, industry standards, ODB2 for diagnostics for instance. And now, Cybersecurity and data privacy is super relevant, you don’t want OEMs or bad actors to be able to disable your car remotely.
Yeah but none of that happens if the corporations that make the cars are the ones writing the laws that regulate them.
I need respectable 90s Japanese cars that are competing to destroy the American automotive industry. But with electronic vehicles.
Yeah. Electric vehicles with no computers (beyond microcontrollers for batter chargers and stuff).
There was a period about 15 years ago where you going get a not stupidly expensive electric refit kit for a bunch of cars - someone I know did it with a 90s Rav4 for like $10k. Unfortunately they seem to be stupid expensive now.
Conversions for most cars are pretty lame. Battery placement is rough and mechanical losses from attaching an electric motor to a transmission for an ICE are significant. Conversions are cool but mostly a novelty.
I’d rather see some real bare-bones electrics, like the first Leafs, with the best battery tech we can toss in them.
Yeah, for sure. Just gotta find a very large funder…
What’s John DeLorean up to these days?
First person to make the hatchback 90s Honda Civic of EVs is going to print money. I’d fucking do it, but I don’t have the capital required to start it.
Seriously. 200 miles of range for the entry model. Compact, make it a little rowdy, make it cheap, make documentation free and widely available. Let people modify it and break it, make a surplus of replacement parts so they can be out back together. Wait 6 months and then release a performance version.
You would print so much fucking money.
Seems like what Slate is trying to do (probably others yoo). But no idea if it’s vaporware or not.
I lucked the fuck out and got a 12 year old Leaf for 700 bucks (a tree fell on it a little). Only 60 mile range, but it’s JUST enough for the commute.
I wonder if there’s a 10k for 100 mile range, 15k for 200 mile range possibility.
It’s already been made. We just can’t have it here in the US because it would kill our domestic auto makers. Can’t have competition if you’re not competitive, right?
In Europe we have Renault offering something in this segment with their new Twingo. Barebone simple EV for city driving and daily commute. It’s priced around 13k€ new.
Yeah, the digital dash and stuff is still a pretty huge turn-off. Dunno if it has things like electric door handles and non-mechanical brakes, but those are also disturbing.
So you mean recuperation by non mechanical brakes?
Comp…etition? Now how might we get world market competition?
Let’s order it on Amazon?
Yes /s
Communism gives you a 10 year wait for a car lol. And that’s only if the authoritarian government in charge deems you worthy of it and you didn’t do anything that might offend them. Just look at the DDR (former eastern germany). Communism there worked well. NOT.
Communism or Capitalism don’t make things better or worse. Corruption makes things worse and regulations and oversight make them better.
Endless stories about garbage made on both sides leads to some rich fucker rigging the system.
Both make things worth. If you’ve got a bit of time on your hands, I can thoroughly recommend James Scott’s book Seeing Like A State. Not many more clear eyed views of the recent history of social structures around.
I will second the recommendation.
I mean we never had communism in the UK, but we built solid reliable council housing from the 60s to the 80s.
Turns out if the government is going to be on the hook for a bad job, they tend to do it right. No point cheaping out on materials if you’re going to be the one coming back to replace the roof in ten years time when it starts to leak.
Can say the same for miljonprogrammet here in Sweden. I live in such a flat, it’s been refreshed, and it’s hella cosy. Built sturdy as hell, think it’d survive a nuke.
We’re facing a housing crisis again, and another one of these would be nice. Buut we all know that won’t happen since housing is an investment, an asset, and the crisis makes it more valuable.
People not having access to housing is making the capitalist class more money.
I’d say one downside with those buildings is that sound travels really easily between neighboring apartments and they often tend to get quite cold in the winter, although I’m not sure how other buildings from the same time period compare.
Definitely beats being homeless though.
I don’t really have that problem with my flat. I can hear the baby downstairs when he cries loudly, but that’s about it. Haven’t heard any other neighbours.
I worry greatly that I’m audible. x3
