What's John DeLorean up to these days?

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.

Skoda still has that reputation amount older people now, despite them probably being really good.

Meanwhile Alfa Romeo coasting under the radar despite being among the most unreliable pieces of shit out there.

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 🤷🏻

tvs were made before fr4 was a thing

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.

Oh no

Non mechanical brakes? Like fly-by-wire or do you mean something else?

true, but fr4 is also a nema-designation and the material existed before that.

Yes, but for Eastern Europeans especially the Russians, quality IS about being repairable. Both the West and East have different perception of what quality is, but both still strive for quality.

I'm more talking about the OP posts "car that works" than quality. A car that's constantly having shit breaking isn't exactly something I'd call a "car that works" even when it's easier to repair

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 put back together. Wait 6 months and then release a performance version.

You would print so much fucking money.

I will second the recommendation.

Plenty of old Western cars are pretty repairable too, while not constantly breaking down. The non-repairabilit, is a more recent trend. Many forget that communism in Europe collapsed almost 4 decades ago. Things changed in general a lot since then.

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.

Comp...etition? Now how might we get world market competition?

They were pretty modern in some ways. Transverse front engine layout, independent rear suspension, body panels made from recycled materials.

East block West block, small block big block. Communism and democracy are cars; capitalism and socialism are engines.

I'm confused, there are no 30 year old cars under capitalism?

I get what you're trying to say, but I don't think this is a great example to use.

Btw, it's Eastern Bloc, not block. I'm sure autocorrect is to blame, but it seems like neat trivia regardless.

So you mean recuperation by non mechanical brakes?

... two stroke engine...

Why is that? Does it come from a Russian word translation? Does it mean something different?

Like a tank, but slower!

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.

More like...When's the last time a car commercial bragged about how your grandchildren will be driving your same car?

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?

It's peak car, tbh.

My Honda pilot is 15 years old and it's just starting to get harder to find parts

My Chevy Volt is 12 years old, and anything that's not a consumable is quickly becoming unobtanium.

🤦‍♂️

I mean, wasn't that the original intention of the post? I read the op pictured as "both bad" but at least the commies can try to fix the engine.

I hate hypercapitalism as much as anyone, but let's not pretend capitalism does not produce excellent cars when the real issue is the cost (global cost, not monetary) of producing them.

Nah, bro has the blue mark of shame.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/bloc

Like all quirks of English the French are to blame.

Nope, it's a French loan word. In English and French, a bloc is a political group. The original French meaning was a block, like a block of wood or cheese, and that meaning is still used, but came to also mean political group or alliance at some point. When it was imported into English, we only kept the political meaning since we already had block.

Yeah but none of that happens if the corporations that make the cars are the ones writing the laws that regulate them.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd credit the economic system with repairability or blame it for unreliability.

To use WW2 as a measurement point: western allied vehicles tended to be extremely repairable. Eastern allied vehicles were also extremely repairable. Western vehicles tended to have closer tolerances for parts, meaning a part could be damaged easier. Eastern tended to have simpler parts, meaning they could be repaired. Western vehicles were geared towards modular components and ease of replacement, so you could swap an engine in 20 minutes or spend an afternoon building a new tank out of two that had been destroyed, even if one was a different model. The Eastern tanks tended to have a more intensive overhaul process, and less shared components between models.
Nazi machines were a shit show with custom parts, low repairability, and poor workmanship. I have no idea why people give them credit for good engineering. Jets are cool, but useless if you can't fuel or fix them. Advanced engine systems are great, but you can't repair them and they explode under stress. Ornate and bespoke parts are cool until they're produced by slaves who do the minimum to avoid death and it warps, leaving you without hope of replacement, no ability to scrap the damn thing, and an enemy who can repair their tanks by either sufficiently motivating a tree trunk into an axle or by using three cars to build a new tank to factory spec over lunch.

You've got America turning car manufacturers into weapons builders: stellar. Mass production and modularization with a skilled assembly line.
You've got the UK having people build machine guns in their basements from simple plans. Wicked little death traps.
You've got the soviets dictating material allocation and design priorities.

The common factor to the good design is the workers distance to design feedback.
The easier it is for a person doing the work to correct how the work is done, the faster the design will iterate and the better it will get.
That feedback loop can be good or bad regardless of the specific economic model.

Hell, duck tape was the result of an ammunition factory worker thinking the tape they were using for ammo boxes was stupid and would get her sons killed, so she wrote the president. He didn't understand in the least, but gave it to the war production board and told them to Fix The Problem, which they did.

Conclusion: if you want good shit, have the people building it tell you how to fix it. Repeatedly.
And don't use fucking slave labor, it's unethical and bad manufacturing.

The second step is to muzzle the intelligent

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/explosive-elon-musk-film-hit-003620107.html

"fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other." - Bertrand Russel

TIL: Nazis were communists

/S

C'mon man.

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.

Yes, that is not one of the "some ways" I mentioned...

Small correction, the left is a capitalist-made vehicle. This fine sample is a communist one. These are still in active use in many places 40+ years after production. Cheap and simple to maintain.

That's the useless, but interesting answer I was looking for. Thanks.

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. They were also exported and sold outside of the Eastern bloc incliding Canada. Incl markets where FIAT was present.

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.

That wasn't even the first such deal. In the 30s they got Ford to licence car and truck tech and assist in building the GAZ auto plant:

In May 1929 the Soviet Union signed an agreement with the American Ford Motor Company.[3] Under its terms, the Soviets agreed to purchase $13 million worth of automobiles and parts, while Ford agreed to give technical assistance until 1938 to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing plant at Nizhny Novgorod. The factory was founded and production started on 1 January 1932. At the time the factory was known as Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant, short NAZ (Nizhegorodskiy avtomobilny zavod), full name Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant named after V. M. Molotov (Nizhegorodskiy avtomobilny zavod imeni V. M. Molotova), after the Soviet minister Vyacheslav Molotov.[4] In 1932 the plant produced its first automobiles, GAZ-AA (originally known as NAZ-AA, as they were manufactured before Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky) truck and GAZ-A passenger car (manufactured after Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky). The cars were based on the Ford Model AA and Ford Model A, respectively.

I just threw up in my mouth, sorry I took any one of them seriously, I will be in the corner of shame. I never participated in tweeter and that will act as my defense for not identifying such a glaring tell of political alignment

There's a reason why soviet era technology was infamous for its use of plywood stalinium.

There's also a reason why post industrial american technology is infamous for its use of chinesium totally legit made in USA stickers.

People are gonna hate this answer but the best products are made in a properly competitive market.

The USSR had state owned OEMS that ultimately relied on deals with foreign manufacturers to jump start their success significantly later than their international counterparts.

The big 3 US OEMs lobbied congress to block foreign imports to protect their inferior product in the home market (multiple times, notably against Japan and recently China).

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.

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