Description
By: Andy Thompson .
Description
Much of Eastern Europe, for many years the mysterious half of the continent, missed out on the first century of the Industrial Revolution. By the middle of the twentieth century. its motor industry, with one or two exceptions, was still very much a cottage industry. It took less than fifty years an unparalleled mix first of communism and then freewheeling capitalism, to create an industry capable of rivalling its older neighbours in France, Germany and Italy. The engineers and designers worked first not to the whims and fancies of motorists, but to the plans and ideals of government planners and communist believers. And then overnight they found themselves cast adrift and unprepared on the wild seas of the free market.
This book tells the story of the cars and vans made in Poland, the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Hungary, Romania. Bulgaria and East Germany. In a region that stretches from the Black Sea to the heart of Europe, the vehicles were as varied as the nations themselves. There were body shells made from cotton waste. rear-engined V8 limousines and air-cooled superminis. Skoda spanned the decades enduring successfully both communism and capitalism, as well known in the West as domestic marques. Trabant and Wartburg, the world's last two-stroke powered cars, survived almost unknown before fading away in the bright lights of capitalism as communism's Iron Curtain was drawn back. The Serbian Yugo managed to take America by storm before post-communist Yugoslavia disintegrated into civil war. Dacia whose exports were once cold shouldered even by its socialist comrades, has been reborn to produce a truly global car, spreading out from Romania and Europe to India, Iran and Mexico.
Now that Eastern Europe has come in from the cold. Joining the European Union family of nations, Cars of Eastern Europe offers a timely and unique look at the cars and vans of this often overlooked part of the continent.
About the author
Andy Thompson has had a lifetime interest in the day-to-day cars and vans that are the real backbone of the world's transport systems. He has owned more than 70 different vehicles, ranging from a 20-year-old Toyota Starlet used to travel across the Sahara and West Africa to a primer grey Morns pick-up used to haul washing machines, car spares and bales of hay around East Anglia. Brought up in the Midlands. Andy lived for a time in Bulgaria before returning home to settle in north Shropshire with his family and dogs.
