Like Sore Thumbs

Step out of Warsaw Central Station and one of the most noticeable buildings you'll see is a 200m colossus of sandstone reminiscent of the Empire State Building, imparted as a gift by the Russians in 1955. Its proper name is the Palace of Culture and Science, but it is (un)affectionately known as the Wedding Cake. It's a monstrous construction that for the last half-century has loomed over the Varsovian skyline, and has only recently been humbled by the constant upthrusting of more modern skyscrapers on the surrounding vacant plots.

Western tourists don't usually see the disharmony between the Russian-built Palace and the surrounding city, as it's all too easy to lump in all the ex-Bloc countries (of which Poland is the largest) under the moniker of 'Russia'. My old primary school geography book didn't help; its crudely-sketched map of Europe carried a clean black swipe of ink somewhere from Nothern Poland to the Black sea, and everything to the right of that was a massive bloody sprawl of garish red, and that charming legend, U.S.S.R. The R was for Russia, we were erroneously informed, and thus a generation was conceived that couldn't see any distinction between Russia, Communism and the Soviet Republic.

Now, should you happen to voice your ignorance in public, the following weeks spent recuperating in a Polish state hospital should ensure you never refer to Poles as Commies, Ruskies or Soviets ever again, especially considering Poland was never included as part of the U.S.S.R. Loathe as they may the Germans for their wartime atrocities, a far more powerful word for the hatred they harbour against the Russians is required. It's unjustifiable in the forgive-and-forget 21st century culture we're supposed to be living in now. but nevertheless, Poles are almost sadistically proud of the abhorence they feel towards their East Slavonic cousins, which makes encountering an almost beautifully preserved example of one of their most iconic motors outside a thoroughly Polish restaurant almost incomprehensible. It would be a bit like having a Kubelwagen parked up outside a Jewish bistro.

The GAZ should feel eerily familiar; if you can remember the Warszawa, the spiritual granddaddy of Polish automobiling, it shares a direct ancestor to the GAZ-21, both being spawned on the back of the previous GAZ, the M20 Pobieda. But whilst the Poles had to make do with churning out M20 clones well into the 1970s, the mightier weight of Mother Russia took the next steps in terms of developing luxury saloons, and the result was the first edition GAZ-21, launched in 1956 and christened after that other symbol of Russia's staggering size, the Volga river which, like my geography books, chases a stark line through western Russia on its way to the Caspian.

It was a sizeable beast, like most things Russian; the Palace remains the tallest building in Poland, after all, and Moscow has seven similar structures.) And unsurprisingly, like the obvious source of inspiration for the Palace, the GAZ borrows heavily from American design cues of the time, albeit delayed by a few years. Where it did differ though, was its posture. Yank-wagons were low-slung wallowing boats designed for the most cushioned ride on the miles of smooth '50s highways being constructed; the Volga instead boasted a massive ground clearance and independant front suspension to cope with the rutted and holed trans-siberian lanes, and phenomenally, a radio as standard to while away the mind-numbing hours it takes to cruise across Kamchatka. There were also some ingenious engineering elements. Some were practical, like having the parking brake operate on the driveshaft rather than the wheels (making the wheel assemblies lighter, good for suspension), and others not so ingenious , like the fourth pedal; an almost ludicrous device that pumped up a central lubrication system for injecting grease onto all suspension and steering joints when needed. That might sound marvellous to start with, guaranteeing supple joints on even the longest journeys, but the downside was the habit of pumping grease all over the city streets as well, which makes a miracle how any of those 30,000 first editions ever survived.

Fast forward to 1962, skipping a generation, and the initial weirdness (like that pedal) and the last remants of any left-over Pobiedan mechanisms have finally been removed, to leave us with the paunchy, punchy motor standing here. If you have never seen a GAZ-21 before, the stylish haunches, massive chrome flashes and the aggressive snarling toothy grill will have you sni faster than you can say "Polyushka Polye". You'll stoop down at the bonnet end to admire the graceful and elegant prancing deer, whilst your finger, lucky person that you are, completely fails to translated the three Cyrillic characters that spell out the acronym of Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or the Gorky Automobile Plant of Nizhny Novgorod, through which the mighty Volga river flows. But don't be fooled by the chrome and flash and three-bulb lights; underneath is a tank of a vehicle, rugged enough to chug its way across the entire Union.

Despite the snow and the salt of at least forty winters, this Volga is in unsurprising condition, by which I mean the paintwork is gleaming. One of the best things about these cars was the devotion that went into the metalwork to protect it against those harsh winters, demanding that the 1.1mm thick steel was etched and dipped twice in phosphate, primed, then coated in thick layers of synthetic enamal. Couple that with an iron-lined aluminium engine block and a design so simple you can fix it even when half-blind on home-made vodka, and you've got a true titan of Soviet motoring. In fact, it's a design so rugged that the engine and a fair portion of the mechanicals lived on for a few more decades under the skin of the UAZ-469.

Over its lifespan 640,000 units sauntered out of the N-N factory, and 75% of those were third-series 21's like the one here. A few estates were also cobbled together as the M22, and even an extremely rare, and absolutely terrifying, line of M23s were secretely manufactured. Cosmetically identical, the M23 housed a stomach-churning 5.5L V8 under the bonnet, and was used exclusively by the KGB for covert snooping and snatch-and-grab missions. Not knowing whether the GAZ behind you was an incognito agent who had declared you "disposable" put an added thrill into seeing one. Outrunning one wouldn't be an option; whilst the vanilla M21 had 65horses on tap, the M23 could muster 160hp. One can only be thankful that a mere 603 of these terrifying machines were ever built.

Now, as thrilling as statistics always are to bedroom mechanics, there's one important factor about the Volga that is lost on many. It was the machine that the proletariat aspired to own, a cowering beast of might and labour that promised freedom to move across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. It replaced the Victory as the true people's car, and yet, considering its launch price of 5100 rubles, less than 2% of the country could afford to buy one.

Even more shocking is that previously quoted production figure of 640k If you want to split hairs, it's 638875, but so many were rehashed from spare parts and homebrew chassis that the real number isn't really known. What IS known, however, is that the only other Russian (not USSR) produced motors at the time, the far more mundane Moskvitches 407, 403 and 408, added up to about 467,000 all told. And you can also forget AutoVAZ, who wouldn't get round to rattling out the Lada Riva until 1970.
Once you've done your number-crunching, it means that, for the entire 1960s, there were only 1.1million cars, give a take a few thousand bloc imports, to serve Russia's 130 million people. That's 0.85% of the population having access to a vehicle, or one car for every 11 people. How's that for some-are-more-equal-than-others?

It is primarily for this reason that the GAZ-21 is such a cultural icon in the ex-USSR; only a car so desirable, yet so unobtainable, could develop into such a cult of personality. But if you have to love the Russians for something, love them for this.

The populace moaned and wailed. Women, clad in black, bawled into handker-
chiefs, sobbing uncontrol-
lably, while the menfolk hung their heads and murmured quiet prayers. Services were held in the wake of the tragedy to pacify the troubled souls affected by the sorrowful events.

1978 was the Year of the 305. Upon its release, the feeling that something great had died was tangible. Even sitting behind the steering wheel gave one an overwhelming sense of loss; it was simply that bad. For every customer that drove away in one, the dealership would light a candle and stand a moment in silence.

Of course, to suggest that floods of women lay wreaths on the streets of Europe for this is possibly the most tenuous link I've ever made. In truth, 1978 was also the Year of Three Popes, as Pope Paul VI passed away and his successor, Jean Paul I, was found propped up in his bed only thirty-three days later, both from heart attacks. Catholics worldwide were quite understandably mournful. Mother Church had been rocked to her very core twice in one year, and there were even rumours of foul play and poisoning over the unexpectedly sudden death of JP1.

From the death of one leading institution to another, and with it, the birth of something else. Following the share buyout of Citroen in 1976, Peugeot had gone on to swallow the debt of the ailing Chrysler-Europe, and with it a most unholy trinity was formed; the anathema to modern motoring that is PSA Peugeot Citroen. This unrighteous terror was embodied in its entirety by the soul-destroying 305. Even looking at one is enough to make you cross yourself.

And thus it was that two groups, Catholics and car-lovers, joined together in weeping at the passing on of something great. From an automotive perspective, the loss of Citroen and the miracles they were able to muster is a pain that French engineering still feels, and modern cars wear their chevrons like stigmata. For the Catholics, of course, there was still hope; aside from the life eternal and the promises that go with it, there was the more pressing earthly concept of electing another Pope to continue the tradition. In that regard Poland was ecstatic, although for reasons possibly selfish rather than truly religious. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow was swiftly elected to the Papacy, and thus a new era was ushered in as the first (and so far, only) Polish Pope was inaugurated as Pope Jean Paul II.

Now, at the risk of having my front doors battered down by angered Catholics, I'm well aware that the Popes have done some good things for the world, but advancing the march of modern thought, intellectual freedom and scientific discovery are not high on their list of achievements. Neither can be said for PSA Peugeot, who in the 305 created some sort of motoring limbo; a three-box purgatory devoid of flair and untouched by any sign of a master creator or higher power.

The idea of the 305 was simple; a comfortably normal saloon that would steal market domination from the big leaders like the Ford Cortina, but without being too radical or outre like the Citroen CX. The result was a Eurobox that managed to tick all the boxes on paper, but raised little more than a yawn in the flesh. Mechanically it was a 304, the hatchback-sized runaround that had sidled its way onto the market in the previous decade, whilst the skin was reminiscent of the far more definitive 504. Now, considering Peugeot had accumulated the entire research division of Citroen, as well as the rotting corpse of Chrysler Europe (including the Rootes group, Simca and the Spanish manufacturer Barrieros), is a cobbled together shell of '60s partsbin technology really the best that France could come up with? Where was the march of progress? Where was that sprinkle of herbs that make French produce that little bit more digestable? For the love of all thats holy, even the engine selection was insipid; power for the 305 came from a massive choice of two engines; a 65hp 1.3, or for the SR (that's the luxury version) a 75hp 1.5; both light aluminium blocks, that's true, but mated to little four-speed 'boxes that Peugeot claimed in all serious could get the 305 up to 95mph, but in reality were simply cheap compromises not to rob the far superior 504 of any of its glory.

This battered shell is one of those SRs which, when launched, was more expensive than a 504. Justified as an Executive edition, it came with such opulent extravagances as a tachometer, headrests, one of those stuffed lumps in the middle of the back seat to rest your arms on, and even black rubber strips down the side. Yes, those were "luxury features" not available to the more mundane GL and GT versions. A map light, plus laminated and tinted windows, were also available options, and the French can only rue that they hadn't invented dogging at that point. Or maybe they had. I'd rather not continue that train of thought.

As you can see, Peugeot really pushed the boat out with the 305. Even a facelift in 1982 wasn't enough to make it interesting. Despite all this, sales weren't actually that disappointing - some reviewers even had the audacity to compare it to a contemporary BMW, to which I can only presume their eyes were weeping from an excess of onion vapour.

This is one of the few cars I can think of that should dwell in its own induced limbo for an eternity; not so much for its crimes against motoring, but for being, like an unchristened child, soulless. Let us pray that it is never resurrected.

One of the ongoing memories of Communist Poland is that of the shopping experiences. Family members would take it in turns to spend the morning queueing outside the local Spolem shop (a co-operative) to buy whatever it was the shop had in stock that day. Such were the conditions of a shortage economy; people worked and had money, but there was simply nothing to buy except mustard and vinegar. Lots and lots of vinegar, which is why Poles are often so sour about the past. Whatever stamps you had available (like ration cards of the war years) would be used up when they could be, meaning one would stumble home with 24 bars of soap, swapping them with other people in your apartment block for toilet rolls, toothpaste, or whatever had trickled into the consumer supply line over the past month. This also explains why Poles drink so much herbal tea. Under Communism, proper tea is theft. Baddum tish.

So if you did want something other than potatoes and tinned ham, a chain of cash-only stores, called Pewex (a ridiculous acronym of Przedsiębiorstwo Eksportu Wewnętrznego -Internal Export Company) were established by the state bank, for two reasons. One, to appease the increasingly irate populace with access to Coca-cola, jeans and aftershave, whilst also removing foreign currency from circulation. All goods had to be bought with Dollars or German Marks; both illegal at the time, which meant that the bank exchanged those currencies for, effectively, Pevex vouchers.
So in those horrific martial-law days of the Eighties, there would simply be no need for any sort of man-and-van shenannigans. The total produce of Poland was being shipped off to the West to pay off the exorbitant loans the country took out in the Seventies, and therefore goods vans, local supplies and your typical delivery driver dealings were completely redundant.

This should play out as providing the stark contrast needed to understand why Poland never developed the Ford Transit, and why seeing a single Western van, let alone two, is a remarkable event. Yes, the Soviet overlords had deemed it necessary to build vans in the 1960s like the FSD Nysa and FSR Zuk, but even when new those vans were horrendously dated in comparison to Ford's finest. There simply wasn't the entrepreneurial drive (in the legal sense, at least) for a small businessman to require a tough, dependable van to shuttle goods around all day, and certainly not at the levels of ease and comfort that the Transit afforded.

It all started in the mid 60s, when the two Fords of Britain and Germany realized, belatedly, that they had been competing not only with Opel and Rootes but also with themselves, on a number of markets, and especially the commercial. Most vans of this time were, like the Polish equivalents, little more than boxy cubes with an engine up front, resulting in sluggish performance, wallowing vomit-inducing bodyroll under load and a rattly, if not deafening, cabin experience. The Ford Thames, the Transit's precursor, was as guilty of this as all the rest, and thus it was that the prodigal son, Henry Ford 2nd, combined the forces of Britain and Germany to make an all-new model that would push the entire genre forward. Thus it was that, in 1965, the all new Ford Transit rolled simultaneously out of factories in Britain and Germany, straight out to the buyers who between them had placed 3.6million pounds-worth of pre-orders. A phenomenal debut by anyone's standards.

This is waxing lyrical, of course, because it's just a van. Or rather, it's THE van. Transits are the vans that all others compare themselves to; they're the benchmark to which the Bedford CF (or Blitz; Opel cottoned on to the UK/Germany blend idea too, eventually) and Leyland Sherpa could only aspire to. The snub-nosed bonnet was a marked departure from the flat-front (VW Camper style) glazed boxes of the '50s, and made a distinctively American impression on the market, which lent an air of glamour to the proceedings. Add to that Fords insistence on comfort as well as practicality, and you find not just engines taken from Ford's car department, but seats, and soft suspension, bolted onto a ladder chassis and leaving, rear of the cab, a low platform that can be utilized into countless possibilities.

Overall, 18 different bodyshells of the Mk I and II Transits were made available, from flat-bed pickups to cavernous Luton box vans capable of moving a five-year-plan's worth of goods. And with production averaging out at a million units a decade, they really shouldn't be as scarce as they seem to be. Yet wandering around Warsaw's pre-war trade district, the sight of these pig-nosed beasts still comes as a shock. In this case, it was stumbling across two examples from the beginning and end of thier era; A stubbier-nosed late '60s piggish Mk I minibus sits around the corner from a mid '80s long-snouted plasticated long-wheel-base Mk II panel-van. Despite the vast differences in body style, panel shape and facial features, these two generations are effectively the same van, operating with the same underpinnings and moulded around that intrinsic principle of Transits - "I want to cram as much stuff in the back as possible."

And cram they did, until the seams burst. Transits were workhorses, and despite being popular, never endeared themselves in a cutesy sense in the way that the vile Volkswagen T2 did. A popular quoted statistic is that more bank robberies involved Transits than any other vehicle, leaving many to a fate of ending up a burnt-out shell on an industrial estate somewhere. They were battered, abused and worn-out, ending up as diesel-smeared hulks left rotting on back roads or smashed up in banger races. Their time came to an end in 1986, when the far more common wedge-nosed Transit muscled in to take over the reigns, advancing the concept of stuff-lugging even further. Look carefully at the photos and you can even see one cheekily in the background.

I even had a camper version of the Mark I Transit for a few weeks. More body filler than actual body, the V4 engine up front was enough to crawl me up and down the South Downs of England at a steady 70mph, thirty years after it had been first built. It was stolen and crushed a month later (the police giving me little sympathy, what with it not being taxed or insured, but still, it was parked on private land), and I still get fond memories of that bus driver's position and the massive fibreglass shell on the back.

These days, like the Pevex vouchers, their tradable value is relatively worthless, but check out those chrome wingtop mirrors on the MkI. Contemporary vans simply weren't that stylish, and if you can make a van glamorous, you must be doing something right.

The story goes that three brothers, Czech, Lech and Rus, three sons of a dead king, went hunting for land together after receiving a disappointing inheritance. The eldest and strongest, Lech, set up camp in the Eagle's Nest, a lush verdant plain now called Poland. The surly Rus founded Ruthenia, to the east, and if you can't guess which country the wily Czech founded, you might as well stop reading now, turn off the internet and kill yourself.

Occasionally a winged arrow will find itself flung over the Moravian mountains from the Czech Republic to Poland, and will land slap-bang in the middle of the Eagle's Nest. This time around, it's in the form of a the Skoda 105 S.

At a time of ICBMs, microprocessors and fibre-optics, there was little wonder that a company like Skoda would want to produce something modern, advanced, daring enough to tug the little Bohemian firm into the 1970s, and decisions were made to try and replace the S100 range of rear-engined, RWD cars whose technology was considered old-fashioned even when new. The flying green arrow desperately needed updating, but the Commie overlords stamped "nyet" on the paperwork that would allow a more radical design to be implemented. It was felt back at Iron Curtain HQ that a front-engined FWD car would be too modern; yes, it would show the West that Soviets could make cars like if they wanted to, but it would also be an admission of failure. All of the slow, heavy hulking Ladas and Zaporozets, and especially the newly-released Wartburg, would be made to look even more cumbersome if a small Moravian motor started nipping up and down the Carpathians.

And so, instead, the S100 project was carried over to another decade. And another. And another. It did so in Skoda's 742 package, which was the name for the 105 and its sisters, 120 and 125, all introduced in 1976 and running out of steam in 1990, when the company was neutered by those bastards Volkswagen and their broad bland brush.

Considering the adversity of the establishment towards technological advances, its no small feat that Skoda managed to make the 105 as well as it did. Not allowed to bring in any technologies from its bloc-brothers, Skoda were forced into the mend-and-make-do mentality which has oft produced some rather ingenious little designs. The old powerplants from the S100 and 110 were kept, but this time a front-mounted radiator and enough plumbing to make a cow's intestine look simple were hooked up to pump cool water from one end to the other, accompanied by a pleasant gurgle and an in-cabin heating system (whether it was desired or not.)

This little grunter is a 105, which not only hides a wimpy little 1046cc engine behind those forlorn headlamps, but also bears the apologetic S on the rear badge, marketing it as the lowest of all possible trim levels in the entire Skoda range. That is as low as it got at Skoda; an S added to the end of the car, because absolutely everything else had been discluded. Whilst the humorously upmarket 105L (luxury, ho ho ho) got TWO dash clocks (speed and rev) and an interior light, the 105 S made do with a single linear speedo and whatever glow you could get from the oncoming traffic. Oh, and that internal furnace of a heater, which could get the cabin up to 60 degrees, in case you couldn't afford a summer holiday on the Adriatic coast. This is true poverty-spec motoring.

By 1983, all the glorious chromework on the top models had been ditched for dull black plastic, but this car is pre-facelift, being this glum straight from the factory. With its mismatched green bodywork and home-added roofrack, it's obviously led a working life, tramping around with its 46 horses, lugging Czech's produce along broken roads at an adequate, and frugal, pace.

Considering its conception as a begrudging descendant of '60s technology rather than a completely new model, its borne out its long history rather well. Pointing and laughing might have sullied the Skoda name for many a year in the West, but the single factor that even the lowest-trimmed weakest-engined poorest-assembled Skoda is still slogging on 30 years later should cause some critics to re-estimate its true worth in the annals of motoring. When collectors value the most desirable fully-specced editions for prosperity, the humble little 105S can hold its snout high, proclaiming that it doesn't need heated leather seats or a passenger-side wing mirror to make it into the history books.