Guess This Bike

[old man emu]

Are those Asians too dumb to come up with an original design without aping British classics?

 

 

[facthunter]

They mostly don't. It's a mainly Indian Pastime. They Immortalised the Morris Oxford as a Hindustan. A CLASSIC is not your ordinary model, but is meant to be outstanding in it's field. The term CLASSIC is a misnomer as the word is often used. Nev

 

 

[old man emu]

Yeah, I agree with your purist definition of CLASSIC, but as a generic term for those things we dreamed of in our youth, it'll do.

 

I notice, however, that the Chinese did not do something similar with the Lada.

 

 

[Marty_d]

The words "Lada" and "Classic" belong nowhere near each other.

 

 

[old man emu]

There's many a Lada out standing in fields.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Peasants! We, the members of the Lada Niva Appreciation Society are outraged at the ignorance shown by the motoring community, raised, as they were on inferior marques. The lovable Niva had mobs of advanced features decades ahead of the pack. Mine took my little family around our continent and to many remote places.

 

Twenty five years before Toyota did, they had four wheel coil spring suspension, two-range 4WD with diff lock, monocoque body, headlight wipers, etc... Despite these advanced features, they carried a sensible toolkit and something you haven't seen in cars for generations: a crank handle, which worked!

 

They could out-climb anything but a Zuke, as my Uluru pic proves:

 

[ATTACH]49992._xfImport[/ATTACH]

 

[pmccarthy]

Must have been towed up there by a Haflinger.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Or an Austin Champ

 

 

[Cosmick]

and a steering wheel which wasn't correctly centered in front of the driver.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Must have been towed up there by a Haflinger.

Actually, I stopped half way up to help a broken down Toyota...

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

and a steering wheel which wasn't correctly centered in front of the driver.

I must concede that point to you, Cosmick. The original LHdrive version was pretty good, with the transmission offset to give the driver plenty of room. When it was converted to RHD they sure buggered up a good design.

 

The driver has less room than the front passenger, the steering box was now on the wrong side, crammed in under the clutch and brake cylinder and their hydraulics. Damned hard to get to.

 

The Niva is said to have come from a 3 km assembly line in Togliatti, Russia. They churned them out by the tens of thousands, so cheap they bartered them for Aussie wool. and they weren't going to change the design for anyone. The glove box was just big enough for a pair of gloves. When you opened it everything fell out.

 

On the bright side, the Lada Niva sold like hot cakes in many countries, and not just because it was cheap. It was years ahead of it's rivals in features and was named 4WD of the year in the early 1980s.

 

Spare parts were incredibly cheap and easy to get, because, unlike Japanese cars, there was one model and it never changed.

 

 

[Cosmick]

My Brother and his daughter were members of the River City (Brisbane) Lada 4wd club. Both had 2 or 3 Nivas the later ones bigger donks and fuel injected.

 

They were very solid vehicles.

 

 

[old man emu]

I apologize for dissing Ladas.

 

 

[nomadpete]

That's alright, OME.

 

Just don't start on Land Rovers.

 

 

[old man emu]

Had a Mk IIA to restore with my son, but he lost interest. I sold it to a family whose two sons were restoring one each.