I just got back from a trip to visit the “auto morgues” of Bulgaria and Romania near the Black Sea coast, so let's jump right in with an example of the only Brezhnev-era Soviet car that still shows up on the streets of that region in any quantity: A VAZ-2101 Zhiguli.
The VAZ-2101/2102/2103 name was used for the Soviet Union, while the Lada 1200/1300/1500 name went on the export versions. You could even buy this car in Canada starting in 1978!
Bulgarian civilization goes way back, as far back as that of better-known places like Egypt and China, but the period of Soviet domination during the Warsaw Pact era has left the most obvious mark on the nation’s landscape and architecture. You’ll find plenty of Brezhnev-era concrete apartment buildings in Varna and nearby areas.
Cars don’t remain useful as long as do buildings, though, so most of the GAZs, ZAZs, Trabants, Wartburgs and the like that roamed Bulgarian streets during the Zhivkov era got crushed a while back. The one exception appears to be the VAZ-2101 and its many similar-looking descendants.
Nowadays, the most numerous older cars on the streets of Black Sea-adjacent Bulgaria and Romania tend to be European iron from the 1980s and 1990s. I saw so many Mark II Volkswagen Golfs and W124 Mercedes-Benzes that I didn’t bother to photograph them (so you get a Peugeot 205 instead).
This car and all its many derivatives were based on the Fiat 124 sedan, with production of the family continuing well into the 2010s. During the 1970s, it was possible to buy a SEAT-badged 124 built in Francoist Spain to go with your Italian-built 124 (or Lada 1500) from neighboring France.
The availability and price of the Lada 1200/1300/1500 in North America and Western Europe varied according to hard-currency gyrations and the temperature of the Cold War at any given moment, but it was generally cheap enough to tempt buyers. Within the Warsaw Pact, the price was set by the government.
I’d gone on a junkyard expedition to the North of England in January, and had few problems talking my way into dismantler-type yards despite the strict workplace-safety rules of the UK. Things didn’t go so smoothly with the employees of Bulgarian automorgues, who tend to speak no English and feel suspicious of the motivations of customers asking (via smartphone translation apps) to take a look at the interesting old cars in their inventory.
In fact, the line between an automorgue and a used car sometimes appears to be a blurry one in this part of the world. This photo shows an indisputable used car lot in Varna, but this type of operation is at one end of a spectrum.
This car was parked in a holding area outside the fence of a business that seemed to sell only complete vehicles, from newish runners to gutted shells. In any case, they wouldn’t sell me parts.
That’s a shame, because I really wanted this Lada grille for my garage wall. I wasn’t able to shoot many photos of it, because menacing wild dogs were gathering as I shot these.
What year is it? I’m going to say early 1980s.
1980s Lada 1200S at Bulgarian junkyard.
[Images: Author]
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Source: The Truth About Cars
