All language subtitles for James.Mays.Cars.of.the.People.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-POPPYCOCK

In the early days of the car, it was
believed that the spread of this new

motoring fad would be limited
by our ability to train chauffeurs

and supply leather
for the upholstery.

Only the rich would have cars.

The rest of us just walked on.

But we, the shuffling masses,
had seen the cars.

And we saw that they were good.

This is the story of how
motoring came to the masses...

how dictatorships

and democracies alike pursued
the dream of cars for all...

..of red herrings, seen here in
green, and automotive cul-de-sacs...

..of shattered dreams
and the fall of the mighty.

This is how we fell in love
with our wheels.

Also, this happens...

'This week, totalitarian transport -

'the people's cars of the state

'and how some were
more equal than others.'

Ow!

'But first, it's time to
slay a sacred cow.'

The term "people's car" is a very
emotive one amongst car historians,

and most of them
would tell you that it all started

with this, the Ford Model T.

But then again,

wasn't it Henry Ford who said,
"History is more or less bunk"?

And I agree with him.

Adolf Hitler was not an engineer.

He was more of
a wildlife enthusiast.

"You only have to look at nature,"

he is alleged to have said,
"to see what streamlining is."

Herr Hitler sagte, "Mein Auto sollte
wie ein Kafer aussehen."

Mr Hitler said,
"My car should look like a beetle."

For me, the Beetle is where the true
story of the people's car begins,

and because it was a social
initiative, not a business one.

Today, the Beetle is the world's
most recognisable car.

Over 21 million were made,

and it's the only car to have
its own Hollywood movie franchise.

But the Love Bug has a dark side.

The Beetle's beginnings
were mired in scandal, deceit, theft

and, let's not beat about the
bush here, crimes against humanity.

And like no other car in history,

the Beetle played a unique
political role in increasing

a dictator's control
over the lives of his people.

To begin with, the Beetle
wasn't even called a Volkswagen.

It was called
the "Kraft durch Freude" Wagen -

the "Strength through Joy" Car.

Kraft durch Freude

was Hitler's ministry
of family leisure activities.

It was created to promote the joys
of living under a Nazi regime.

The KdF operated on a massive scale.

It built Titanic-sized
cruise liners...

vast holiday complexes,

and laid on free trips
for the honest German family.

There were even nationwide
keep-fit clubs.

A little bit of morning exercise

with just a subtle hint of bunting.

Hitler thought there should be
a car as well.

That would bring the state
right into the heart of everyday

family life.

The man entrusted with its design...

legendary engineer
Dr Ferdinand Porsche.

He's the one with the tache.

The KdF car would be
built in a vast new factory -

the Volkswagenwerk in Saxony,

and should, above all,

be affordable for the average
German worker.

And this is what he came up with -

the original
Kraft durch Freude Wagen.

And when I say original,
I mean very original.

This is the oldest running Beetle
in the world.

It's prototype number six,

and it was built by Dr Porsche
in his Stuttgart workshops.

So strictly speaking,

since the Volkswagen factory
hadn't been finished yet,

this is a Porsche.

When you look at an original
prototype like this,

you can see exactly
what Hitler was on about.

It should look like a beetle
and it does,

it does look like a beetle.

Operate the semaphore indicators...

Now, obviously, it isn't fast,
it is actually quite noisy,

the steering is a bit wayward...

If somebody comes past in an Audi
at 150, I definitely feel it.

But, at the time, the KdF-Wagen
was quite something,

especially if you'd never been
in a car.

The hard-up German public

were utterly seduced by the promise
of owning their very own car.

After all, the Beetle was good
enough for the party bosses,

who, predictably,
got the first ones.

This actual KdF-Wagen I'm driving

went on to be the personal car
of Dr Robert Ley

who was head of
the Kraft durch Freude movement.

And, in essence,
he was the "Minister for Fun".

Robert Ley was one of Hitler's
earliest supporters

and his KdF was instrumental
in keeping the German worker

sweet with the Nazi regime.

But, when he was not running
his vast empire of cruise liners

and holiday camps, he was involved
in camps of a very different kind.

His slave labour activities
resulted in the deaths of thousands.

He was going to be tried
for war crimes,

along with the rest of them,

but he managed to hang himself
in his cell

before Albert Pierrepoint
could do the job for him.

This is genuinely disturbing.

I've driven a lot of strange cars

but I've never been in one
that's a genuine instrument of evil.

Apart from the G-Wiz.

I'd just like to make it clear
I'm very interested in his car,

but I don't share any political
views with Dr Robert Ley.

And the reason
I can't help but like the car

is because it's beautifully
well thought out.

The engine - as we know
from that joke about the nun

who thought hers had been stolen -
is in the back.

That means that all the noise
and all the fumes it produces

are left behind.

And, because there was no engine
in the front,

the nose could be rounded off.

The whole car approached
the ideal streamlined

half of a teardrop shape,

and streamlining was all the rage
in the 1930s.

But the KdF-Wagen wasn't designed
to be occupied by a solitary

German officer.

THEY SING

Much better.

This is what Hitler
built his Beetle for -

the long-haul Nazi family holiday.

THEY ALL SING

It wasn't just the car itself,

but the entire lifestyle around it
that Hitler and the KdF envisaged.

The Aryan family would have
as many children as possible,

so the car would be suited to
a family of five.

They would drive in comfort
at 100km/h along the autobahn

for four hours between stops

until they reached one
of the pre-determined KdF resorts.

THEY SING

What could be better?

The holiday atmosphere began
as soon as you climbed aboard.

This is Prora,

a 20,000-bed holiday camp
on the Baltic island of Rugen.

The Nazis got the idea
from Butlins...

..including the communal showers.

By putting away
a few pfennigs a week,

you could stay in your
well-appointed KdF seaside apartment

equipped with your very own
KdF radio.

HITLER SPEECH PLAYS ON RADIO

And by putting away a little more,

you too could arrive there
in Darth Vader's helmet.

Stylish, affordable, totalitarian.

The car cost 990 Reichsmarks.

The typical working German family
earned 32 marks a week.

So, the rule was -

Funf Mark die woche musst du sparen,
willst Du im eigenen Wagen fahren.

"Five marks a week
must you put aside,

"if in your own car
you wish to ride."

So, savers bought
these five marks stamps

and stuck them in this Sparkarte,
a savings card.

When the card was full,
you could have your car.

But if you defaulted on just
one of these weekly payments,

the whole thing was forfeit.

But, really,
five marks a week was easy.

Even children could
contribute to the family car

with one of these KdF-Wagen
savings tins.

Look at this thing...

It is rather beautiful, isn't it?

The savings plan and
the lavish marketing driving it

proved irresistible.

By 1938, when the giant Volkswagen
factory finally came on line,

millions of Germans were
dutifully filling the KdF coffers

and the Nazis
had a hit on their hands.

The whole scheme
was rather brilliant.

A car, a radio, a holiday.

What innocent German citizen,

remembering all
the hyper-inflation of the 1920s,

wouldn't have bought into it?

I'd have bought into it.

There was only one tiny problem...

The whole Beetle savings scheme
was a giant con trick.

The Prora holiday camp never opened.

If there'd been a KdF customer
complaints line,

it would have had a longer queue
than Virgin Broadband's.

No-one received a Beetle -

none of the families who'd funded
that massive Volkswagenwerk factory

with all their scrimping
and saving.

If the Germans had actually
eaten kippers,

you could say they'd been
stitched up like one.

The great factory became
an engine room of the war effort.

The Beetle's versatile,
innovative chassis

was adapted to create
two German war vehicles -

the rugged all-terrain Kubelwagen

and the amphibious Schwimmwagen.

But it didn't stop at vehicles.

Russian and Jewish slave labour

were also forced to make Hitler's
secret weapon - the V-1 flying bomb.

So, unwittingly,

those honest hard-working
German Volk of the mid 1930s,

with their brightly coloured
cash tins and their saving stamps,

helped to demolish a row of houses

about a mile from
where I now live in London.

But, let's be positive,
at least it wasn't the chip shop.

The Allies soon identified
the factory

as the home to Hitler's flying bomb
and blew the place to bits.

And when the advancing Allied
ground forces took the factory

in April 1945,

the Nazi dream of the people's car
seemed well and truly buried.

So, when Major Ivan Hirst
of the British Army

arrived at the ruins of
Volkswagenwerk in 1945,

charged with putting a car into
production for the occupying forces,

the place was a bit of a mess.

But amongst the rubble,
or so the story goes,

he found the battered remains
of an odd beetle-shaped car.

He and his German colleagues
repaired it

and sent it off to the Army
for evaluation.

The message that came back was
an order for 20,000.

The qualities that Hitler
had demanded of his people's car -

ruggedness, simplicity,
ease of maintenance -

were just what the Army wanted.

But just when the British
had done the difficult bit

and got the Beetle back on track,

they and their American Allies
made the costliest blunder

in the history of car-making.

The Beetle, the designs
and the factory itself

were offered to Western car
companies as a free war reparation.

But no-one wanted to know.

The chairman of Ford said
it wasn't worth a damn.

Britain's Lord Rootes
also turned it down.

20 years later, the Rootes Group,
his great automotive concern,

would produce its own
small rear-engined car

in the form of the Hillman Imp,

but that was liquid cooled
and plagued by overheating.

In the end, only around
half a million were made,

around 3% of the total
Beetle output.

Meanwhile, all of this,

the hub of Europe's greatest and
most profitable car-making business,

all of this, it's all here
because of the Beetle.

Epic British fail.

Eventually, unable to offer
the factory as a free gift

if you bought 20 litres of petrol,

the Allies gave it back
to the government of Saxony.

Soon, the Beetle was appearing
where it was always meant to -

on the driveways of German families.

Abroad, too, although now,
like many of its contemporaries,

it had a new name -

The Volkswagen...

The "people's car".

But here's the real irony -

it's rumoured that when Major Hirst
arrived at Volkswagenwerk,

he found the remains of only
a few Kraft durch Freude Wagen.

And if that's true, I'm forced to
conclude that had the Allied

bombing campaign had been
just a little bit more thorough,

the second half of the 20th century

would have been spared
the shameless re-emergence

of Hitler's flatulent people's car.

And more to the point, we might
have been spared one of the most

annoying counter-cultural movements
in history.

But sadly not.

# What would you do if the sky
was falling... #

And that's why I've never
really liked the Beetle.

It's not the car, it's the baggage.

It is, tragically,

impossible to separate
the gormless face of the VW Beetle

from a lot of soppy, hippy nonsense.

Quite how the Beetle came to be
the symbol of the flower people

is a mystery,

but it was in blissed-out
California that this

fascist fugitive created
a brand-new, loved-up identity.

Did none of these people ever stop

to think where this car
had come from?

Nope.
The ex-Nazi party runabout was cool.

And that's all that mattered.

But the Beetle couldn't hide
its KdF past entirely.

The hippies may have been
responsible for many

questionable things
like flower power, Woodstock,

The Incredible String Band, sit-ins,
wigwams, the acceptance of yoghurt

and all the rest of it, but they
were also the innocent victims

of a dubious 1930s German practice

that followed the Beetle around
like a bad smell.

Nudism was something our old mates
from Kraft durch Freude

were very keen on indeed,
although we don't know exactly why.

But it's clear that the Beetle
helped this provocative pastime

spread to west coast America.

This is '50s America,

a simpler time, when the height
of family entertainment was

the car door mechanism
of a Chevrolet.

But at around the time the Beetle
scuttled onto Yankee shores...

the country became
a free-love infested,

swinging hotbed of carefree
psychedelic exhibitionism.

And, no, I don't know
why she's chasing a heron.

But everywhere one of these vicious
outbreaks of nudity occurred,

you were sure to spot
a lurking Volkswagen.

It even looks a bit like a buttock.

Part of my problem with the Beetle

apart from all the Nazi baggage,
obviously,

is that,
rather like the hippies themselves,

it's a bit falsely humble.

It's perceived as being cute

so it comes across as a sort
of smug, ironic apology

on the part of its owner.

But, actually, it isn't cute
and it definitely isn't ironic.

This shape, the engine,
the chassis -

they were the manifestations

of some very radical engineering
thinking of the 1930s.

So far, the people's car has been
a litany of repression and disaster.

But to show that it was possible
to create a small,

affordable four-seater,

we need only come to sunny,
capitalist Italy

and try this...

This is a Fiat Cinquecento,

or the Fiat 500 in a less romantic
Germanic language.

It was called the 500 because
it had a 500cc engine.

Although, strictly speaking,
the early cars had a 479cc engine,

but Fiat Quattrocentosettantanove

was going to be a bit of
a flamboyant name,

even for the Italians.

And at the time,

the little Fiat 500 was the height
of zippy carefree Italian cool.

The adverts of the time
proudly showing how you too

could drive like a maniac,
traumatise by-standing cattle,

and store unwanted gas bills.

But crucially, still have enough
room in the back for your favourite

luxury picnic hamper
or an adulterous weekend getaway

playing doctors and nurses.

In recent years, we've lost sight
of what "small car" really means.

The Fiat 500
is absolutely chuffing piccolo.

It's just 275mm,
or less than your school ruler,

longer than a Smart car,
but this has four seats.

It weighs just 470kg - around
two-thirds of the original Mini.

It really is very, very simple.

The engine is an air-cooled
two-cylinder job,

mounted here in the back,
same as the Beetle's was,

and for similar reasons.

The earliest cars developed
a widow-making 13 horsepower.

But don't worry, because this one
is a bit later and has 17.

Maintenance was intended to be
very simple.

In the more rural areas of Italy,

corner shops would stock
essential Cinquecento spares -

spark plugs, belts,
and what have you.

Rather in the way that these days

you can buy a sat nav
from Sainsbury's.

And we think of it as being
incredibly cute,

but Dante Giacosa did not design it
to be this shape

so that we would go
oochy-coochy-coo,

he did it this way to use as
little sheet metal as possible,

because in 1950s Italy,
steel was expensive.

And that brings us to this
fabric sunroof,

which was not an extravagance,
and it wasn't an option -

you had to have it.

And it was there because fabric
is lighter and cheaper than steel.

Avanti.

The 500 was launched in 1957

with the aim of the being
the Italian people's car.

A four-wheeled version
of a Vespa scooter.

And while the KdF-Wagen
and the Trabi were cheap,

they were, it has to be said,

about as cheerful as your average
Sean Penn film.

The 500...was fun.

In the way that the Trabant

reminded you of you
and your ideology's failings,

the Fiat Cinquecento seemed to
confirm that a simple life

could be one of unalloyed joy.

But it's in the narrow,
cobbled streets of the city

that this proto-Smart car
really comes into its own.

And you can see why.
I mean, this is an ancient city,

this is part of
the Italian renaissance.

Some of the roads are tiny.

But look, here we go, room for two.

The Fiat 500 is a potent symbol
of Italian utilitarian chic,

the Latin driving temperament,

and creative solutions
to everyday parking problems.

Stuck for a space? No matter.

Thanks to the 500, you can squeeze
expertly into any gap

without a care in the world.

Between 1957 and 1975, Fiat built
around 3.6 million Cinquecenti.

Not bad.

But it isn't Italy's most successful
people's car, not by a long way.

That's coming up now.

Forgive me, Father,
for I have sinned.

CHORAL MUSIC PLAYS

Fiat's next bash at a people's car
was launched, literally, in 1966.

Fiat spared no expense
on the 124's arrival.

It even had those white jump-suited
guys from the Trabi ad

who were clearly looking for work.

Despite that, no-one could have
predicted that this

unassuming little car
would go on to be

the vehicle of choice for one
of the greatest tyrannies on Earth.

Cars like this were around
when I was a boy,

and when I was a boy, Italian cars
were famous for two things -

firstly, for dissolving like
a soluble aspirin

as soon as it rained...

Secondly, for being great fun
to drive.

Now, the difficulty we had in
finding this mint example suggests,

rather tragically, that the
first of those is perfectly true.

Now let's see about the other one.

Now, this looks a bit like a car
I designed when I was six,

and I'm sure lots of six-year-olds
still design cars like this -

three basic boxes
with some wheels added.

Indeed, one of Fiat's official
histories describes this as,

"a rather conventional car".

But hang on a minute -
beneath this

depiction-of-a-car-on-a-signpost
exterior,

the 124 is a bit more sofisticato
than you might think.

For a start, it came with
a range of typically Italian fizzy

four-pot engines.

This 1968 car has a 1.2-litre
developing 60 horsepower.

Now that's not a lot, I know,

but what it does have

it gives willingly,
enthusiastically.

Underneath,
there were coil springs,

anti-roll bars and disc brakes.

Now that gave you very good bar room
bragging rights in the 1960s,

especially in a family car.

What basic Italian cars
always gave - still give, in fact -

is the sensation of performance
without the expense

and inconvenience
of actually achieving it.

So you get an exciting engine,
you get a nice gear change,

nicely weighted pedals,
nicely weighted steering...

..a car you can
sort of fling around a bit.

The 124 may be as bouncy and fun
as Tigger's honeymoon night,

but there is one area in which
it's sadly lacking - air-con.

It's got nice big glass, it makes
a nice noise, it's happy, it's hot.

I'm sweaty. I'm literally
the hottest person in the world.

MUFFLED RADIO MESSAGE

Bah!

But what's all this got to do with
the greatest tyranny on Earth?

To explain, I'm having to take
the 124 back home.

I'm now driving up the ramps

of Fiat's historic
Lingotto car factory,

deep in the heart of Turin.

It opened in 1923 - an Art Deco
masterpiece for manufacturing.

Sadly, now a shopping centre,
like so many other of these things,

but one little bit of it,
one very significant bit,

survives pretty much as it was -
the rooftop test track.

What a view!

Much better than
our Dunsfold test track.

On to the banking and whoo-hoo!

HE LAUGHS

Ho-ho!

From up here, Fiat executives could
survey their empire,

which was, let's be frank, Italy,

because Fiat was such an enormous
force in Italian commerce

and politics and culture.

And that empire was about to grow
enormously.

Well, let me rephrase that,
actually.

The Fiat 124's empire

was about to grow enormously.

Over here, we have another one,
apparently identical

apart from the colour.

But, actually, there are something
like 900 subtle changes under

the skin, and one very significant
change on it, which is this...

..the badge.

It does not say "Fiat".

It shows the outline
of a historic, fast-sailing boat

from the River Volga, and the
Russian name for one of those is...

Lada.

RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

In the 1960s, the Cold War
was at its most precarious,

but what bothered the Soviet Union
most of all was this -

in the USA, there was one car
for every 2.7 people,

in the Soviet Union,
one for every 238.

In 1965, Americans produced
9.3 million passenger vehicles.

Russians produced under 250,000.

Something had to be done.

Now, it might seem odd
that the Soviet Union looked to

outside help in order to bring
cars to its people.

The Soviets were already experts
at producing tractors, trucks

and especially tanks
in truly astonishing numbers,

but they didn't know
much about making

a typical small passenger car.

So if you were lucky enough
to have one,

you were unlucky enough for it to be
something like a Zaporozhet.

So, approaches were made
by the Soviets to the West, even,

ironically,
to our old friends at VW.

Nothing came of that,
which was a lucky escape for Ivan.

There were flirtations with Britain
as well, and with France,

but, finally, in 1966, the Soviet
minister of automobile production

signed a deal with
the managing director of Fiat,

that charged Fiat with building
a brand-new factory,

capable of producing
2,000 passenger cars a day,

and the car would be a Sovietised
version of the Fiat 124.

And this is the result -
the AvtoVAZ factory at Tolyatti,

known to everybody else in the world
as the home of Lada,

and it still is.

But why pick Fiat?

Well, the Italian car company
already had a relationship with

the USSR, having supplied trucks to
them in kit form 40 years earlier.

Also, the Fiat 124,
it has been suggested, was the ideal

car for a Communist regime, as it
was predominantly functional and

exhibited little in the way of pesky
bourgeois decadence.

But was there something more shady
at the heart of the deal?

Let's not forget,
there was a Cold War on.

Outside of the actual
Communist nations,

the biggest Communists
of the 1960s were the Italians.

The notorious Red Brigade was born
in the metal pressing shops of Fiat.

It quickly spread to other parts of
the Italian car industry -

the Pirelli tyre factory,

the Magneti Marelli
auto-electrics work.

And by the '70s, over in Italy,
Communist Red Brigade members

with jobs at Fiat were not only
getting funds and support

from the KGB, they were also
murdering their own executives.

30 Fiat workers were
jailed for terrorist offences.

There was arson in the factories,
strikes, mass walkouts.

And the Agnelli family,
the effective owners of Fiat,

became the most guarded family
in the world.

Allegedly, Gianni Agnelli
carried a cyanide pill

in case he was kidnapped.

Now as somebody once said, "When
Fiat trembles, Italy trembles."

So, was the deal done
to keep the Soviets sweet

in case Communism
eventually triumphed,

or even simply to placate Fiat's
Communist workers even if it didn't?

It's just a thought.

Anyway, in April 1970, the first car

rolled off the glorious
new production line,

just in time for the centenary
of Lenin's birth.

Nice.

And this is what those
first cars looked like.

Yes, exactly like a Fiat 124,

but thanks to the famously sterling
condition of Russian roads,

under the skin, the Lada was given
a Marxist make-over to deal with

these sort of mildly
adverse conditions.

It had an all-new engine,
a blistering 1cc bigger than before.

The steel bodywork was thickened
all over.

Over time, a big radiator was added,
the floor was strengthened,

square headlights went on,
new bumpers, different wheels -

this no-nonsense Communist approach

extended to their Finnish
advertising campaign.

ADVERT IN FINNISH

Now here we are in 2013 and I'm
driving something of a rarity.

It's an original stock, low mileage,
under 3,000 Lada Riva.

But that shouldn't be a rarity,
should it?

I mean, few things in life
are less rare than a Lada Riva.

It is in very good condition,
by which I mean

it's in quite poor condition,
because that's how they were made.

That said, a lot of developing
countries around the world

were very keen on it
and so Russia began

licensing and exporting Ladas to a
whole slew of Third World countries,

including India, Egypt,
and Thatcher's Britain.

Strangely enough, in Britain,
this car, the Riva, enjoyed a brief

renaissance as the car of
the oppressed and immobile people,

because in the Thatcher era,
the industrial North

and parts of the Midlands
were wracked by redundancies

and people were very hard up.

This was the cheapest car
you could buy.

This was the easiest way

to stay mobile.

And briefly, this was the tenth
bestselling car in Britain.

Some people risk buying a used car

when they could quite easily afford
a brand-new Lada.

The UK Lada ads were a cornucopia
of extravagance

compared with what had come before.

You either had the luxury
of Cannon and Ball...

I thought you said "risque", Tommy,
I thought you said "risque."

..or this action-packed spectacular,

which presented the Lada as some
kind of gravity-defying super car,

perfect for a typical Sunday
afternoon's African safari...

Each Lada is built to survive...

..while you listen to your mix tape
of the Airwolf theme song.

AIRWOLF THEME SONG PLAYS

..the roughest of roads.

So, in order to test that claim,
I've come here -

the old ZiL automobile factory...

275 hectares of industrial complex
right in the centre of Moscow...

..now all but abandoned.

Interestingly, they used to make

those old pre-Lada
Fiat kit trucks here.

It's now home
to the odd rabid stray dog

and the most distressed surfaces
this side of Jeremy Clarkson's face.

Sorry about the weaving around -

there are some quite big holes
in this bit of road.

Ow!

Good God!

Hole...

TYRES SCREECH

I can see some very concerned faces
in my rear-view mirror.

OVER RADIO: 'Sorry, James.

'I'll be with you in a moment.'

'We've barely started and
the ancient Communist potholes have

'given our decadent
Western crew car a flat tyre.

'This is a top of the line,
modern day Range Rover.

'I think that's 1-0 to the '70s
levitating safari wagon.'

LADA BEEPS HORN

So, while the beefed up Soviet Lada
could handle anything that could be

thrown at it, the same couldn't be
said for the Soviet regime.

By the 1980s,
everything was falling apart.

The great social experiment
had yielded a result which was,

"No, it doesn't really work. Sorry."

So, a lot of people did what
any reasonable person would do

under the circumstances...

..they got drunk.

RUSSIAN FOLK SONG PLAYS

Even the President decided to put
the "pub" back into Soviet Republic.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

Back at the Togliatti factory,
things weren't any better.

They actually changed the speed
of the production line

throughout the day.

It could go a bit faster
in the afternoon...

TYRES RUMBLE

..because everyone's hangover
had worn off a bit.

There was widespread theft -
components were being

catapulted over the perimeter fence
of the factory by groups of workers

building cars and supplying spares
on the black market.

Pirelli Tyres brought in
for the export models -

they were stolen from the factory

because obviously
the Russians would want them.

Their tyres were terrible.

And they were taken
out of the factory on an elaborate

rubber boat that left via the sewers

and then sailed off
down the River Volga,

rather like the fast pirate boat

the car was named after
in the first place -

an irony the Russians would have
surely appreciated,

were they not completely Sputnik-ed.

Lada was falling apart.
Your Lada Riva was falling apart.

If you were lucky enough to have
a Lada Riva, it was being

gradually reduced by rust,
by the potholes...

LADA THUDS

..like that, and by your neighbours
nicking vital parts

during the night.

Spares were very, very scarce
and very, very expensive.

Fortunately, enterprising Soviets
would set up

guerrilla roadside repair stations
with ingenious DIY solutions.

"Leaky radiator, comrade?"
The answer is...

..Russian mustard powder.

You pour a bit of that in,
forms a very, very effective seal.

Another common problem
was that the bottom of the fuel tank

would be holed on the rough roads.

Well, the answer to that was
a bar of Soviet soap.

You rub that against the hole,
it forms a small plug,

which becomes rock hard -
very effective.

What else have we got?

Oh, yes,
here's a very good story we heard.

There was a man,
an old man we've been talking to,

driving in a very remote area

and the return spring
on his clutch pedal failed.

Not to worry, though,
because he had at his disposal

what the Soviets refer to simply as
"rubber product number two" -

here's a copy of the packaging.

You can probably guess what it is

from the picture
of the smoking factory at the top.

It's a condom.

"Rubber product number one"
was a gas mask.

And to pay for this DIY MOT,

all you needed were some luxury
Western goods to trade.

Have a fish, mate.

It was the comradeship of the road.

And so, like a cockroach after
a nuclear blast, the Lada just

kept going
as society crumbled around it.

As the Soviets kept on churning
them out, Lada gained

a reputation, not as a maker
of people's cars, or even

as a robust survivor,
but as a long, obsolete fossil -

a global punchline.

There are more specific Lada jokes,
I think,

than there are about any other car.

What do you call a Lada
at the top of a hill?

A miracle.

A Lada with the window open
is a bottle bank.

A man buys a Lada
and takes it back to the dealership.

"This car is useless," he says.
"It'll only get to 75 up that hill."

"Well, that's not bad,"
says the dealer.

"It's useless," says the man,
"I live at number 93."

A man goes to a scrap yard.

"Have you got a hub cap for a Lada?"
he asks.

"Yes," says the scrap merchant,
"that sounds like a fair swap."

Ho-ho-ho.

Laugh, possibly,

but like the Beetle before it,
the Lada was a survivor.

I have here an extract
from an article that

appeared in the Financial Times
in 1967,

talking all about
the Fiat/Soviet deal.

And it says, "Soviet planners have
made it clear they do not intend

"to emulate Detroit's practice
of planned obsolescence,

"and so the Soviet versions
of the Fiat 124 may well

"continue in production
until the late 1970s."

Well, I bet he wishes
he'd been better informed,

because the last one rolled out
of this factory in 2012.

This, then, will be
the legacy of the Lada -

not that it was one of the oldest
cars still being produced,

nor that it was one
of the few survivors

of the collapsed Communist regime.

No, the Lada will for ever
be remembered as the worldwide

punchline of
Christmas-cracker-level comedy crap.

It does distress me that a story
that begins with the gorgeous,

almost feminine, Fiat 124, is going

to end with the world's
most derided car -

a car with a face

that only a Russian's shot-putter's
mother could love.

It's going to go out
with a pathetic whimper.

The poor old Lada -
yet another victim of state tyranny.

There's always an issue
with a dictator's car. The Beetle -

it was brilliant,

but the people who paid for it
never actually took delivery.

The Trabi and the Wartburg -
they were awful,

but the people were forced
to have them.

The Lada -

it started off quite well, but
totalitarianism slowly ruined it.

It does seem that if you actually
want to mess up your motoring,

you need a dictator.

But let's not forget the Lada's
long journey began in a joyful

flourish of Italian style.

It fell from the sun-drenched sky.

We thought it should bow out
the same way.

RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

It's what the designer,
Oscar Montabone, would have wanted.

The Lada - hated by purists, mocked
by the people, and disowned by Fiat.

But there's a twist -

I wonder if the people signing
that original deal

realised it would go on for so long

and I wonder if Fiat's executives
ever imagined this...

Now, no-one knows for sure quite
how many 124-derived cars have

been built, but if we combine
Fiat's original output with

the Togliatti cars and all the ones
built in India, Spain, Bulgaria,

Turkey, Egypt and Korea, it comes
to something like 20 million,

which means that the largely
forgotten Fiat 124 is,

in fact, the second
bestselling car in history.

MUSIC PLAYS: "Brindisi"
from La Traviata

Subtitles by Ericsson