Car Culture in Communist Romania – Tractors, Trabants and a VW Prototype

What was car ownership like in Communist Romania under Ceausescu? To understand this, we need to look at how private ownership was always secondary to state ownership. And the stars were always trucks and tractors. The UTB Tractors were a fluke, as they were some of the best tractors of their time, and even tot his day will command high prices.

Yes, UTB tractors were imported into the US under the Long Tractors brand name, where even the non functioning examples command thousands of dollars, with operational units going well into the five digit pricing! This was done only due to passionate gear heads that had to misfortune of living under communism.

Trucks were almost in their entirety license built, with designs coming from the USSR, which in turn had received them from the US post-WWII. Such as the Bucegi truck here, built from a ZIL license, which was built from a 1957 Ford Pickup, upsized into commercial truck territory.

One of the smaller trucks, the Aro, retains a lot of character, from the old ZIL based truck, to the original 200 series, being a simple, rugged truck, meant to remain in service with minimal tooling. It was the Jeep Cherokee of Iron Block Romania.

Let’s look at what “imports” the communist Romanian buyer had available. One such import was the Trabant. I will give the Zwickau team credit. Germans will do german things as we can see from the way they set up the automation on their assembly line. Remember, the Trabant was made from “duroplast” a material not unlike cardboard.

Finally, let’s look at a 1974 VW Passat prototype. VW’s were not available to the public. Only the police or party members would have access to such cars, and usually Beetles. The Passat here is a strange case, since Western car makers rarely tried entering Soviet markets, but with Renaul licensing cars to Dacia, VW was no doubt trying something similar.

The report shows the focus on the Romanian market, on items we have had for a long time, like adjusting mirrors, and seat belts. While we look at this VW as being rather ugly, it would be sad as a average Romanian, looking at something like this, with longing, knowing they could never attain it, and never afford it.

Here’s to all our gear head brothers that made it out of one block, to enter another…

Oil is thicker than blood!

0:00 Intro
0:27 Historic Context of Communist Romania
2:46 UTB “Uzina Tractorul Brasov” aka Long Tractors
3:35 Ford Trucks (1957) License Built in Romania and USSR
4:42 Renault 8 aka Dacia 1100
5:11 Aro Off-Road Romanian Trucks – Romanian ZIL and Land Rover Defender
5:58 Trabant Assembly Line in Zwickau
7:20 VW Passat Prototype at Romanian TIB Show in 1974 – (Safety!)
9:00 T-Shirts and New Speed Metal Design!

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